


we've been together for as long as I remember (but we only make love in the spring)

by attonitos_gloria



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: (just saying), (the slow burn is real), Character Study, Denial of Feelings, Eventual Romance, Eventual Smut, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Gratuitous Smut, Huddling For Warmth, Mutual pining by now actually, Non-Linear Narrative, POV Alternating, Past Abuse, Pining, Post-War, Rebuilding Winterfell, Slow Burn, a lot of denial, also poems, internalized ableism, look at me updating the tags
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-22
Updated: 2019-04-05
Packaged: 2019-06-13 21:45:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 71,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15373998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/attonitos_gloria/pseuds/attonitos_gloria
Summary: This whole marriage is winterbound. He wouldn't call it love.[The wars are over; there's peace in the Seven Kingdoms, the survivors are trying to rebuild, and Tyrion Lannister and his wife, Sansa Stark, learn how to build a home in the North as they wait for news of spring.]





	1. with grace in your heart and flowers in your hair

Sansa, on rare occasions, can paint her words with amusement and her eyes sometimes gleam in mirth; but her mouth remains tied up, heart-shaped, red lips sealing her truths and joys like a grave. Sometimes the blue her mother gave her threatens to spill over her face in a burst of grief, and Tyrion is waiting — everyone is waiting — for her to break down. Everyone knows, by now, about her: the girl who saw her father die, who was beaten by grown, armed men before the court, who was forced to marry the Imp, who lived under a bastard's skin for more than a year, who killed Petyr Baelish. When she first entered the broken walls of Winterfell, they all thought: at some point she _must_ start screaming and throwing things in other people's faces and no one shall blame her; she _must_ go mad, even if just for one day. She earned it.

But she never did. She remained stable like a cornerstone, keeping the household in order and trying to feed everyone, attending to the Great Hall every day and listening beside the rightful Lord of Winterfell, Rickon, making all the little and big decisions as his Regent; trying to teach him every day how to be a proper lord, which seems her most arduous task. The servants are scarce and sometimes she is the one to go to Winter Town herself, Brienne loyally at her side. Arya works with the masons to rebuild the ruins of their home. Tyrion helps, when the younger one lets him.

He is pretty sure the only reason Sansa asked for him to come North with her was so she could keep refusing the letters asking for her hand in marriage, piling atop her work table. He is also pretty sure Daenerys granted it because, gods above, there is no parallel to how the hardness of steel and the weariness of a crone mix up in Sansa's face and courteous words, a girl with burdens and sorrows for a lifetime; it is hard to deny her anything.

Still, no one dares to call her Lady Lannister. She is _milady, Lady Sansa, Lady Stark_. Tyrion calls her _wife_ , and _my lady_ , because her name — Sansa, only _Sansa_ — burns his tongue.

Sansa won't let anyone pity her — it is impossible with so much _coldness_ in her gaze, the certainty of her orders — but at the end of the day in their chambers, far from sight, her shoulders drop in tiredness while she settles in front of the fireplace. He brings her favorite tea — chamomile, at night — and their fingers brush when she takes the cup. "Thank you, my lord," she whispers gently. Their marriage is not a song, but it isn't anymore the nightmare that it once was and both of them are content with it, because winter is here, and one must keep its head low. Sometimes he reads to her. Sometimes she sews while he works. Sometimes they stay silent by the window and do nothing as the snow falls and covers her home white. She doesn't smile, but Tyrion knows she likes the view — her eyes get somehow brighter, the lines of worry fading from her brow.

The first time Tyrion sees it, they've been married again for three moons and it is not for _him_ : Rickon brings her a winter flower after being particularly wild one day. The petals are not quite Tully blue — more like royal blue, a beautiful shade, dark and deep. And then it happens — after her initial surprise, a careful, slow smile opens her lips — with teeth and all, reaching her eyes and melting the ice that freezes them like a winter's curse. She pats his hair and pulls him to a hug. "Thank you so much, Rick. I loved it."

It is so breathtakingly beautiful that somewhere in the vicinity of his heart, he feels an ache. And he thinks, in a mad, romantic moment, that all around them — walls of gray stones, food coming in from winter town; horses; maids and servants and builders; snow, earth, daily life, war, death — this is all context, this is all secondary.

 _That smile_. That is the _important_ thing.

(Sansa wears the flower in her hair, tucked behind her ear, during dinner; after they retire that night, she uses it as a page mark to her book. Winter is here, and there is no other available way to collect flowers).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter's title from "after the storm", by mumford and sons; fic title by "the one", by wild child.  
> Also, be warned: this is just me, rambling about my favorite ASOIAF couple, in a future where almost everyone survives. There's no real plot going on; it won't probably make much sense.


	2. the terrible reunions in store for her will take up the rest of her life

 

 

 

> They say  
>  there is a rift in the human soul  
>  which was not constructed to belong  
>  entirely to life. Earth
> 
> asks us to deny this rift, a threat  
>  disguised as suggestion—
> 
> (...)
> 
> When death confronts her, she has never seen  
>  the meadow without the daisies.  
>  Suddenly she is no longer  
>  singing her maidenly songs  
>  about her mother’s  
>  beauty and fecundity. Where  
>  the rift is, the break is.  
>    
>  "Persephone the Wanderer," Louise Glück

 

 

The thing about her is—

Sansa is not a stupid girl. She has never been, even as a child, no matter how much they tried to make her believe that; but now, she can read people as easily as open books. She _knows_ what they are thinking and expecting and planning. It's like a gift in reverse.

When all the wars are over, and the major concern is not so much survival against an army of dead men, but rather survival against the old, familiar and equally lethal cold of the North, under a winter that refuses to give in —death, Sansa knows, is a headstrong, obstinate thing— she is looking at what is left of Winterfell's household, and they're all waiting for her orders. She judges them dysfunctional; she judges herself not ready. But no one ever asked her if she were ready, and these men and women won't either. They look at her and see her mother, and for a moment Sansa wonders if Baelish will ever truly leave this place so close to her heart someday ( _In a better world, you might have been mine, not Eddard Stark's_ , he'd said, but she is his, too, in a terrible way; and she hates it. She hates how much he mattered. She hates she had to swing the sword, or rather the knife which killed him, and how his last words haunt her worst nightmares: _I see you are Ned's daughter, after all, sweetling. I'm very sorry about that_.) 

Unfortunately, Sansa is not Catelyn Stark. She is an amalgam of every woman she'd ever met, the good and the bad. She is Cersei and Catelyn and Alayne (because Alayne is, in fact, _other_ woman); she's a little bit of Myranda and a part of her is Arya and another is Jeyne. (There's her men, too; but she doesn't like to think about them. Ned's voice is vanishing from her memory, while Petyr's is still clear. She follows her true father's steps through his _silence_ , his _absence_. Ned is in her blood rather than in her mind. She loves him wordlessly, but at least it is working.) And above all, she knows how it is to be like Winterfell: broken, violated, burned to the ground but somehow still stand. Everything around her is an echo from somewhere inside. And so, Sansa steels her spine. Like a lady — maybe like Catelyn did; maybe all that is left of her mother is this involuntary reflex, of being the strong one during war and loss, but she couldn't know — she says her welcomes, and starts guiding them through the rebuilding.

(She keeps her distance from the crypt's door, nonetheless.)

She shares a bed with Arya one night, and they're not quite tangled in each other but it is close enough. "It doesn't feel like home," her sister confesses, and Sansa thinks they are too young for this.

"Not yet," she murmurs, like a promise. "But it will."

 

 

 

 

 

 

*

(I am not certain I will  
keep this word: is earth  
"home" to Persephone? Is she at home, conceivable,  
in the bed of the god? Is she  
at home nowhere? Is she  
a born wanderer, in other words  
an existential  
replica of her own mother, less  
hamstrung by ideas of causality?)

*

 

 

 

 

 

 

The first time they've met again was in King's Landing, where Sansa was summoned up to officially kneel before Daenerys Targaryen in Rickon's name. She was given a wide chamber, windows placed West, and the setting sun painted everything around her a lovely pink, with orange shadows. It was almost warm in the South, even during winter. Her skin was fresh right after a bath, and the clouds were sparse in the twilight sky. Her maids had just left, and she sat alone on the chair before the dressing table, watching her reflection framed by an oval mirror: her hair fell loose, still damp, and the roots were red – down until the level of her shoulders, but from that point on it was still dark-brown. And Sansa never discovered what, exactly, triggered it: but she looked at her own eyes — Tully eyes — and remembered being eleven and scared for her life; remembered being eleven and lost and grieving and longing for rescue. _Remembered_ is not quite the word: she _remembered_ , of course, since she first entered the city's gate, but at that moment, bathed in sunset light, she suddenly _felt_ it with overwhelming intensity. She was in the same Red Keep, there was armed, savage men serving a Queen down the stairs, in the same room they stripped her off to the skin, and she needed to run from that place, from all those _liars_ — until she looked at her own dark hair. _Why, sweetling. You're a liar, too_.

And so, Sansa searched among her dresses for the knife Petyr gave her, came back to face the mirror, and stared at her mother's eyes while she begun to hack off the strands of Alayne's hair in ragged, uneven slashes. She didn't notice when her eyes begun to swell; nor when her husband entered the room. (She remembers blood in her palm, but can't remember the pain.) In a second she was alone and in the following, she wasn't: he was right there, his familiar voice — low and deep — sounding concerned, "My lady? What are you—"

(This picture will never leave her mind: her own terrified face, and his ugly one right behind her; worry coloring his black eye, kindness overflowing from the green; a tentative hand hovering above her shoulder but never really touching her. There's a little part of her that is still waiting for _that_ specific touch, as if he had just made a debt, somehow. But that is a silly thought. Sansa casts it away every time he hands her a cup of tea and accidentally bumps his hand against hers.)

She barely acknowledged his presence, back then, but she also hadn't seen him in years and his unmistakable face somehow anchored her back to reality. She didn't think of him as her husband, nor as her captor; neither enemy nor friend. She spoke to him as ghosts spoke to humans, in stories — trying to be real, trying to be flesh and bone. "I need to get rid of this," she interrupted. Could have been done earlier, but she'd been avoiding too much time in front of mirrors.

He'd looked to the floor, to the pieces of her past spreading out in a mess around her. And in a unexpected demonstration of wisdom, he made no questions; he merely reached out one hand to grab hers, took the knife from her. Her numb body didn't reject the touch, but didn't really notice it, either. "Alright. So we must."

She didn't fight him, but hated his patronizing tone. _I'm not mad_ , she'd thought. "This is not my hair. It is not _mine_ ," she explained, looking him in the eye through the mirror.

"Indeed, it isn't," he didn't look away. "You're a redhead. I remember." ( _Like your mother_ , he never voiced, but she heard it.) She felt a wetness in her lips, but it was a distant, irrelevant perception. "Let me help you with this, my lady."

Sansa is still not sure about the precise moment she begun to plan this, to remain married to Tyrion Lannister – it was an idea built on hopes of _stability_ , not love, during sleepless nights at the Eyrie – but in her heart of hearts, she knows what decided it: his silence as he cut off one more part of Alayne from her (neither the first nor the last part), before he could greet her as Lady Stark, before they could exchange a proper word; outside the impersonal zone of her courtesies and his constant japes. For all the bad blood, the war, the anger and hurt between them, Tyrion — misshapen and covered in scars, noisy and loud, witty and bitter: impossible to hide, impossible to miss, impossible to _ignore_ — did nothing but remind her, for better or for worse, how she was still _there_.

 

 

 

 

 

 

*

(All the different nouns—

she says them in rotation.  
_Death, husband, god, stranger._  
Everything sounds so simple, so conventional.  
I must have been, she thinks, a simple girl.)

*

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sansa is not a stupid girl. She knows people. She knows her people best.

When she goes South and comes back with the Imp, she knows what they are thinking.

She ignores their icy stares and calls for Podrick, who at least won't kill her husband in the meantime. "Please, make sure there is a hot bath waiting for him," she gives Tyrion one last quick glare before her attention comes back to the attendant. They barely spoke on their way here. The air between them seemed rarefied every time they got too close; he makes her feel breathless in the worst sense of the word. "Assist him and carry his belongings upstairs."

Only when he and Podrick disappear from her view she turns around, crossing her arms before her body to stare at the rest of the household present in the Great Hall. _I need to speak with Arya,_ she realizes. One of the perks of being in Winterfell again is that northerners never cared about the useless courtesies that were so valued at the capital. She doesn't need to pretend so much, here, so – "We've been married for years now. You all knew it," she states in a flat tone, raising her chin.

"A mummer's farce. He is a Lannister and a kinslayer," the man says, unkindly.

"I'm sorry, my lord. I didn't know you were still mourning Tywin's death." She narrows her eyes and when he starts to protest, she continues. "I appreciate your loyalty, I truly do. But Lord Tyrion tried to –" the words are caught in her throat and she has to look up for a minute, away from their faces. "He tried to protect me," she resumes, in a tone that says too well that it wasn't enough. "He is willing to help us to rebuild the North. He brought people, and gold, and we need all the help we can get. We can't refuse."

"My lady –"

"He is my husband and he is staying." She takes her gloves off and takes a deep breath. "And I mean _alive_ , of course. Now, where is my sister?"

 

 

 

 

 

 

*

(My soul  
shattered with the strain  
of trying to belong to earth—  
What will you do,

when it is your turn in the field with the god?)

*

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tyrion closes his book and gets up from his chair beside her. "I'll retire to bed, my lady, if you will excuse me."

She peeks at the candle wax and frowns in confusion. "So soon?"

"Yes. We leave at dawn." And, when she frowns deeper, he completes: "To White Harbor? I'm sure I've talked about it twice or more by now." There's a subtle note of frustration in his voice, but she appreciates his effort to hide it.

"Oh," she remembers. The first day of full moon. "Tomorrow. Of course."

He smiles a little, then, like he can't help it. Sansa is trying to learn his smiles, because there is a lot between them that goes unsaid. This one is half condescending, half charmed; she tries not to linger her thoughts on the latter, not only because there is nothing graceful in her constant distractions, but because she is afraid of —she doesn't even know. "Podrick gave me a list," he takes a piece of paper sticking out from the book's pages. "Is there anything else we need?"

 _We._ Sansa takes the list, using the chance to watch her husband's face. He doesn't belong here, they both know it; he will always be a foreigner. But lately, it feels like everybody is. _It doesn't feel like home. Not yet._ "Everything you _can_ bring is here," she shrugs. "Will you grab my purse, please, my lord?"

"No, I won't," he takes the list from her hands and hides it inside one of the pockets of the doublet laying on the back of his chair. "There is no need for that."

"My lord—"

"My lady." He answers in the same tone, and she sighs in anticipated defeat. "I've compromised my family's fortune in far less noble causes."

All the unsaid things — _a Lannister always pay his debts, and I owe you, and you know it_ — fill up the air until she feels dizzy and inhales deeply again, hands nervously clutching each other. Of course he'd offered help for the reconstruction, but buying food was too much. It felt just a little as if he were staying for good, another topic open to discussion, since their union remains unconsummated despite the bed they've been sharing for three moons. "Thank you, my lord."

She waits for a witty remark, or some joke, but even Tyrion Lannister knows there are boundaries. He nods, murmurs "sure, sure, goodnight, my lady," and climbs up into the bed. Sansa pretends to come back to her needlework, and counts his breath until she is sure he is asleep. His nightmares, she knows now, will only come later into the night.

For now, it is a peaceful sound, and she can't help but remember, _it will be home._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the chapter title and the poem quoted are "Persephone the Wanderer", by Louise Glück, because Sansa is Persephone and we all know it. (I know the Persephone thing in her arc is about Petyr, and not Tyrion, but this poem is so beautiful).  
> Like I said, I have no idea where this is going, so I guess we will be going back and forth between the present and the past?? and between Sansa's POV and Tyrion's??? this is very messy and non-linear. I'm so so sorry.


	3. you take the things you love and tear them apart

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Brief note: I will try to write smaller chapters; I just really needed this one.

 

 

 

> We can do anything. It's not because  
>  our hearts are large, they're not, it's what we  
>  struggle with. (...) My dragonfly,  
>  my black-eyed fire, the knives in the kitchen are singing  
>  for blood, but we are the crossroads, my little outlaw,  
>  and this is the map of my heart, the landscape  
>  after cruelty which is, of course, a garden, which is  
>  a tenderness, which is a room, a lover saying _Hold me_  
>  _tight, it's getting cold_. We have not touched the stars,  
>  nor are we forgiven, which brings us back  
>  to the hero's shoulders and the gentleness that comes,  
>  not from the absence of violence, but despite  
>  the abundance of it.
> 
> "Snow and dirty rain," Richard Siken  
> 

 

 

 

If he could ignore the fishery scent of White Harbor – but keep the salty air making his skin sticky, the breeze from the sea kissing his hair – and replace it by the smell of fresh earth and wood after spring rain, maybe, it would be easier to picture sunset colors in the horizon and Lannisport around him.

Tyrion is, of course, familiar with the Narrow Sea; he spent a great part of his life in King’s Landing and a particular time of it actually _crossing_ the damn ocean, but the Sunset Sea is the background of all his childhood memories. It is a part of him like Jaime and Cersei's noises in dark corners and behind closed doors, like the sound of Tywin's footsteps and the terrified feeling that came with it, like the Hall of Heroes and Joanna's tomb. He doesn't miss the Rock. He doesn't miss the people. But he misses the sentiment of familiarity, and he surely misses the shore, the quiet lullaby of the waves – and so, he closes his eyes and listens.

Lately, he felt like being vanished away from the surface of the earth without actually leaving it; the opposite of a ghost. His lady wife – oh, she was the ghost. Sansa was a bodiless wanderer, hovering three inches above the ground; a soul detached of things, places, people. Himself was more like their ultimate enemy: a empty, degraded body, lifeless and heartless, disintegrating but walking towards gods know where. Tyrion took it as his chance of atonement. Better men had died in the Wars, after all. Certainly survival was never meant as a prize? At some point he had to accept he was living a purgatory, and needed _not_ to be a monster, for once, in order to leave. (In order to _leave,_ in order to find his _home_.)

Tyrion tries to conjure anything that resembles the feeling of being home, and the first image that comes to his mind is one of dark curls, dark eyes; the memories profaned with the clang of silver coins.

And so, he tries to focus on the funny noises of the seagulls in the waters.

(Home: meeting Rhaegal for the first time. Home: the night before they went to the Wall, he and Jon and Dany, unable to sleep, but also unable to leave each other, watching the dawn coming on the horizon. Golden-boy Jaime, his lost hero, coming back home with a wooden toy from Lannisport when he was four.

Sansa, and auburn hair on the level of her shoulders. Sansa, and her scent – flowers, sugar-sweet and something else, something _hers_. Quiet nights before the fireplace, and her presence like a shadow by his side: never leaving, mute, untouchable; something in the lines of her form that could be him, that looks like him, if he searches –

 _The birds. Pay attention to the birds_.)

"M'lord," calls Podrick Payne by his side. Tyrion winces as he approaches the boy. Their journey was long and tiring and his hips are aching. "Where are we heading now?"

All Tyrion wanted was a hot bath and a bed, but– "Nowhere. For now, we wait."

"What are we waiting for, m'lord?"

"Not _what_ ," Tyrion corrects him, trying to ignore the people's gazes. It is hard to miss a dwarf, and almost impossible to miss a noseless dwarf, but he can't know precisely the reason why they stare. The rumors about him can dance around both of his titles: _kinslayer_ or _dragonrider_. The monster or the savior. No one is quite sure, himself included. "Who."

His purgatory is not the worst of places, although it _is_ painfully monochromatic. Everything above the Neck was like that: White Harbor, for instance, was made of houses built in whitewashed stones covered in snow. The sea is grey, the sky too, even the anchored boats are some shade of white. All lands in the North looked the same to him. He tries to keep his wits and calm, in spite of the chill in his bones, and remember one afternoon silently spent beside Sansa, in her solar, while she tried to teach Rickon the names, mottoes and sigils of all their vassals. "You know House Manderly very well, better than I do," she'd said, a slender finger pointing to the eastern shore of the White Knife on the open map across her table. Her hands were made for playing the high-harp, he had thought. "Lord Manderly is a loyal friend of House Stark. That is why he took care of you."

"He said his son died on Robb's wedding," Rickon had said, "and that he was protecting me from the lions."

( _Robb's wedding_ , he called it, even if the whole _issue_ was that it wasn't Robb's wedding. He and Sansa stiffened their shoulders, but her youngest brother never noticed.)

And so, when Tyrion turns around and feels a pressure from three equidistant points stinging on his chest, a guard with a trident beside a big, fat, red-faced man, dressed in fine clothes – velvet doublet embroidered with golden thread and a golden trident as a pin to his mantle – he is startled and afraid as he raises his arms in surrender, but _surprised_? Not really; no more than the men are surprised to see him.

"I should do Lady Stark a favor and kill you right now," says the big man beside his attacker. With the corner of his eyes, Tyrion sees Podrick reaching for his sword. "Would she miss you, I wonder?"

"Don't, Pod. Here is our man." Tyrion stares calmly at Wyman Manderly's hateful eyes. "I don't know about missing _me_ , but she will be pretty upset if I don't go back to Winterfell with her demands." He shakes the piece of paper in his raised hand, and tries to keep his voice firm and steady. "One might think that it is bad for business to threaten your guests in such a rude manner."

"I don't care about all the gold you shit, Imp."

"You mistake me, my lord. This one would be my father. A little taller, way older? But I'm afraid he is not among us any longer." And he almost smirks. Almost. "Unfortunately."

(Tyrion regrets a great amount of things. Killing Tywin is not one of them. If everyone will despise him for that, then so be it. They all loathed him before; at least now they have a proper _reason_.)

Lord Manderly reluctantly looks at his guard, and the man puts his trident down. "Lady Sansa sent us a letter about your arrival."

"Oh, did she," Tyrion smirks and lowers his arms. (Slowly. Just in case.) "Very thoughtful of her."

"I assume she trusts you, since you are here in her stead. But don't you ever think _we_ do, too."

"I could never, my lord." The man reminds him of Arya, during those first weeks. _Sansa accepts you, Jon likes you. That doesn't mean I trust you, Lannister._ Arya and everyone else, although not everyone were brave enough to say it to his face, to spit it, _Lannister_. Like a curse. "And about her confidence in me, I'm just as surprised as you."

"Very well." The men begin to walk through the cobbled streets; Tyrion follows them, and Podrick follows Tyrion. "Are you here for the ships, the weapons, the whores or the food?"

"You wound me, Lord Manderly. I'm a married, faithful man, and ours are times of peace." His voice drips irony, although every word is true. Jaime used to say it was a talent. "I came for the food, as I'm sure my lady wife wrote you. And..." Both of his hands hide under his cloak. "I need a merchant from Myr."

"Myr?" Lord Manderly frowns. "They make a fine wine. Good to keep you warm."

"Maybe I'll take some with me," Tyrion smirks. "The gods know I'm in dire need of it. But I'm looking for glass panes."

They stop next to a marble statue of a mermaid, and Tyrion sees a flicker of realization in Wyman Manderly's eyes. The man smiles, then, just a little. "I see. Good glass will cost you a great deal."

"Oh, but I know." Tyrion crosses his arms, trying to keep the heat in his small body, and looks to the straight line on the horizon, beyond the waves. No sunsets. Grey. Everything here is _grey_. "You're talking to a _Lannister_ , my lord."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(The lawn drowned, the sky on fire,  
the gold light falling backward through the glass  
of every room. I'll give you my heart to make a place  
for it to happen, evidence of a love that transcends hunger.  
Is that too much to expect? That I would name the stars  
for you? That I would take you there?)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At first, his brain registered the basics: she was prettier; older; thinner; and damn her, taller.

He knew, but not because she told him: she ran away with Littlefinger when she left him to take the fall and die, disguised as his bastard daughter in the Vale; she just came back to her abandoned, ruined home, in constant but slow process of rebuilding due to the ruthless cold of the North; she killed Petyr in a trial which took place in Winterfell, among snow and burned stones.

Her hair was dark at the tips of her long braid. It was a beautiful effect, the gradient from red to black across the plaits, but all he felt was a drop in his stomach, suddenly grateful he never saw her before the roots grew again. He didn't linger his thoughts on this; carefully tried not to see into it as he cut off the black, dry strands.

"Come back North with me," she had asked. He kept a safe distance between their arms. They never discussed the important things ( _where have you been_ , and _why did you left_ , and _can you forgive me_ , and _did you find them, the things you were looking for_ ), and he'd looked at her with a comma shaping one eyebrow. Her eyes never met his. He'd thought, _the Rock never fell; it won't leave the West. It will be there, waiting for me._ "I don't want to marry anyone else." And, after a moment of hesitation, she finally looked at his face. "Do you?"

In other mouths, with other people, it would have been a sweet declaration of love, worthy of a song. _I just want you, there is no one else for me_.

But they were Sansa Stark and Tyrion Lannister, and her words were just an statement of how they fought against the world, survived, but somehow life won over them. They were the defeated. They were very tired.

Still, Tyrion never understood why she had called (no more than he knew why he had accepted her worn offer).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(Here is the river, and here is the box, and here are  
the monsters we put in the box to test our strength  
against. Here is the cake, and here is the fork, and here's  
the desire to put it inside us, and then the question  
behind every question: _What happens next?_ )

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Library Tower had burnt during the Wars, and the few remaining maps of Winterfell were old and difficult to read. So during his first week in Winterfell, Tyrion sat by Arya's side while she described the land from memory and they drew a draft of a map together (because, well, penitence). "There is the godswood, between the North's gate and the Hunter's gate. The Guards Hall, in the east, next to the Broken Tower and the First Keep. The door to the crypts. No," she harshly took the charcoal from his hands. "Here. The Armory is here, close to the middle," Arya scribbled. "The Kitchen, and the Guest House are here, and the Library Tower in between."

"I recall something there," he pointed to a blank space right above the godswood on the parchment. "From one of those old maps." 

Arya winced. Almost imperceptible, but it was there. "The Glass Gardens. There are hot springs under the ground," and she shook her head quickly, as if to dismiss a dangerous thought, and continued her work, delineating thick inner walls. "We don't have money for that. Appropriated glass panels will cost more than what we can pay. Dornish glass won't do. We would have to trade it with Myr."

"We don't know how many years of winter we have ahead," he reminded her, in a practical tone, since Arya was very clearly a practical girl. "A greenhouse would surely be useful."

"It won't last long," Arya murmured. The candle burning on the table, next to their joined heads, cast shadows which made her face look dangerous. Even when she spoke low, the younger sister spoke sternly, fiercely; so different from Sansa, he had thought, who always spoke gently, even in her harder days, as if she couldn't help it. A part of him feared Arya. Truly. "The worst is over. Spring will arrive soon."

"You can't know those things, my lady."

"Don't be stupid. Of course I can." Her voice did that thing, that Stark thing – as if their blood and name were somehow linked to the land in mysterious, old ways, not only as means to an end, to food or power. As if they could feel the earth vibrating in their bodies. Telling them secrets. He felt, not for the first time, completely out of his depth and sighed.

Sansa had a list of priorities: the Kitchen first, then the Guest House. The Great Hall and the Great Keep needed fixing, but not complete rebuilding, and were enough to shelter them all. He brought the topic after supper, in their chambers, and she had looked through the open window to the black night. "For now we can trade food with the South. I wish we could rebuild it, but Arya is right. I'm afraid we can only do one thing at a time." Her voice was hollow, distant, and he suddenly felt interested in another opinion from her.

"She told me this season is coming to an end." His wife kept her eyes on the courtyard. It was terribly cold, even indoors, but the snow wasn't falling; they could still listen to people working down there, far away in the smithy. "Do you believe it?"

And then the corner of her mouth tugged up, in a curve that could be a tiny smile; he wished she hadn't done it. "I wouldn't be so sure, my lord."

He never found out if they were talking about the same subject.

Tyrion finds the Myrish trader by the fifth day of their stay in White Harbor, and it does cost a small fortune, but he closes the deal anyway. If someone is searching for glass panels from Myr in the middle of the winter, such person is in blatant despair. He says to himself he is doing it for the food, so no one will starve in this unending winter, and not as a poor endeavor to strip away that submissive sadness from Sansa's eyes, as if all she could ever hope for was coldness. 

They will rebuild the goddamned gardens. They will make flowers grow in it through sheer force of will even if this is the last thing he will do in the North. He can't keep living in a world of black and white. It may be cheating, but if nothing changes he will go _mad_.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(I was away, I don't know where, lying on the floor,  
pretending I was dead. _I wanted to hurt you_  
_but the victory is that I could not stomach it_.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

He is coming back to the inn with Pod one night and sees it, an old, probably drunk man selling all sorts of artifacts and utensils, all of them piled and distributed over a purple carpet: poorly stitched clothes, gloves, dresses, bodices; broken toys; jewels missing one or two stones; used, matte wares; combs and mirrors with ivory handles; herbal oils and powders; porcelains from both Westeros and across the seas; and some secondhand books, too. He comes closer to look better at them: a book of prayers of the Seven with worn pages; a commentary on the changing of the seasons from a maester; a collection of songs and poems of the Seven Kingdoms; an economic study covering the period of Aegon I until Jaehaerys I. One of them, a chivalry romance by an author from the Reach, Tyrion recognizes, and smiles bitterly to himself. He read it as a child, some of the words still clear in his head, as they usually were with his reading materials: _Lady, you wish to betray me. Shall I despise everyone? If love were not good, I would never love with refined love, but live always in hatred. Then I would be a mortal sinner, in fact worse, by the Gods, than a sneak thief; I couldn’t help sinning. I have to get out of this difficulty by one of two ways: either I love or I hate._ He remembers believing it, back then – or trying very hard to, with his whole soul. (That love was worth the fall and the pain and the bleeding; that it would save him.) He doesn't know what he believes anymore; he's lost all his answers. Maybe, just maybe, the scraps of his faith, a romantic ten years old boy that refused to die under his twisted, scarred skin, took the ultimate decision when the time came and he choose to go over the Wall. Maybe today the book would serve as a good source of comedy, but as he turns the pages, he can't help but think of Sansa.

He wonders if she would find it cruel of him, as a joke; if she would find it romantic; he doesn't know, but he suddenly wants her to read it.

"A gift for your lady, m'lord?" asks the man, showing him a necklace with fake rubies.

"Rubies would not look good on my lady," he answers, and tilts his head to the side, pondering. The exemplar is old, but preserved. He takes some pennies from his pocket. "I'll have the book, though."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(I crawled out the window and ran into the woods.  
I had to make up all the words myself. The way  
they taste, the way they sound in the air. I passed  
through the narrow gate, stumbled in, stumbled  
around for a while, and stumbled back out. I made  
this place for you. A place for you to love me.  
If this isn't a kingdom then I don't know what is.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

All the wagons are full: barrels with dried grains, rye, wheat, oats, honeyed fruits, chestnuts and hazelnuts, salted stockfish, herrings, potted meat, trunks with clothes and fabrics. They are ready to leave, and Lord Manderly, for all his trepidation, came to bid them farewell.

"We Manderlys are very loyal to House Stark, my lord."

"I'm aware," Tyrion murmurs, trying to keep the cynicism out of his voice. He was in the man's city, after all.

"We protected our liege lord during winter. Kept him safe when–"

"Yes," Tyrion interrupts, not having any desire to hear one more story about the tragedy of his wife's family, carefully avoiding the vague feeling of guilt and responsibility and, therefore, the absurdity and utter lack of meaning of their marriage. "I know."

"And we are very fond of lady Sansa." Lord Manderly narrows his already small eyes. "A good lady, she is. Suffered enough."

Tyrion remembers the throne room, a child on her knees, a mad king, and shivers all over. "I agree, my lord."

"We northerners are suspicious of lions. We remember." _He is justifying himself_ , Tyrion thinks. _I won't get a proper apology._ Maybe he really shouldn't, after all. Penitence, he says to himself, penitence, and bites his tongue. "People rumble about you, my lord. I know you risked your life at the Wall in the Great War, but if Lady Sansa needs our help, we'll come to her before you can blink. Send her my regards. Tell we'll visit soon."

Lord Manderly speaks like the father he never had, and the father Sansa no more has, and suddenly that conversation is too much – too _normal_ for the likes of them; no more the old hatred towards Lannisters in general, but merely a paternal figure intimidating a man to treat his daughter right, his fragile girl who deserves only the best – but he is not the best, and Sansa hasn't been treated right since her father died.

(I could be good to you, he had said once. _Fool, fool, why did you say that, why did you think_ – )

"I won't harm her. I never did." Why does he need to keep reminding everyone of that? Oh, right. Because his family were a bunch of crazy, murderous idiots. "You seriously need to stop threatening your customers."

"I'm sure you'll forgive me, my lord," he says with a smile, as someone who isn't sorry at all. "I'm just trying to keep the Starks children safe."

"I won't resent you for mistrusting my strength of character," he asserts, rather tired of carrying his family's crimes. Being the last one has more burdens than glories. "But I'm not stupid. I don't want northerner wrath all over my head, and I'm sick of war as much as you."

"You can't buy peace, my lord of Lannister," the man says, no more full of hate or contempt. Just the same weariness everyone seems to carry, after the war. 

Tyrion rolls his eyes. "Of course you can."

"No, you can't. Peace is the daughter of justice. And if you can buy justice – well, that hardly would be justice worth its name."

"Spoken as a true northerner with blood of the Reach, my lord." Wyman Manderly laughs openly at the remark, his immense body shaking, and holds out his hand.

"It was a pleasure to make business with you, Lord Tyrion."

"We'll agree to disagree on that." Tyrion shakes his hand and Lord Manderly laughs again. "I'll send her your regards."

Pod is waiting for him. They enter the carriage and start the long ride back to the only home he was allowed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter's title from "A Primer For The Small Weird Loves", by Richard Siken.  
> Chapter's poem is "Snow and dirty rain", also by Richard Siken, because there is no such thing as too much Richard Siken, and I'll use him again and again and forever and then start all over.  
> I'm pretty sure the word "Purgatory" is never mentioned in the series, but since the faith in the Seven is basically Roman Catholic Church, I'm taking artistic liberties here.  
> The book Tyrion buys and mentally quotes is a medieval poem from 1230 originally called _Le Roman de la Rose_. You can read it [here](https://archive.org/stream/LorrisGuillaumeDeTheRomanceOfTheRose/Lorris%2C+Guillaume+de+-+The+Romance+of+the+Rose_djvu.txt). I changed "God" for "Gods" because of Reasons.


	4. i'm not as callous as you think

> But I can't look at him, can hardly speak,  
>  I took the bullet for all the wrong reasons, I'd just as soon kill you myself, I say.  
>  You keep saying _I owe you, I owe..._ but you say the same thing every time.  
>  Let's not talk about it, let's just not talk.  
>  Not because I don't believe it, not because I want it any different, but I'm always saving  
>  and you're always owing and I'm tired of asking to settle the debt.  
>  Don't bother.  
>  You never mean it anyway, not really, and it only makes me that much more ashamed.  
>  There's only one thing I want, don't make me say it, just get me bandages, I’m bleeding,  
>  I'm not just making conversation.
> 
> "Wishbone" by Richard Siken

Sansa finds Arya's bedroom on the third night after Tyrion's departure. She doesn't announce herself. The moon hangs high in the sky and it is easy to find the bed.

"Missing your husband already?" she mocks, making room for Sansa to settle by her side, and the older one rolls her eyes.

"Shut up, Arya." Sansa comes closer to her sister's body, head resting on her shoulder. Arya has always been a slender girl, and Winter made them all thinner, but since they came back home, Sansa would choose the sharp angles of her bones over a thousand furs any day.

"When shall he come back?"

"In four weeks, maybe five." Sansa smirks a little. "Why? Are _you_ missing him?"

"He is not the worst man to have around."

"No, he isn't," and Sansa's smirk turns into a smile, of sorts. "I don't particularly miss _him_ , but it feels weird to sleep alone again."

"Really?" Arya turns to the side, and Sansa does the same, so they can face each other, although they can see more shadows than real lines. "You two behave so oddly around each other."

Sansa curls her brow in confusion. "What do you mean?"

"You always move _together_. When he moves to the right, you tilt to the left. When he reaches for the eggs during breakfast, you give it to him, as if you're trying to keep him from getting closer to you. And if he hears you coming through a corridor, he automatically leans against the wall, so you won't bump into him on your way. It is like you are perpetually avoiding each other, but also never too far away... Like a dance." Arya studies her carefully, narrowing her grey eyes.

"I didn't know you spent so much time watching us move." Sansa mutters, protectively embracing the quilt tighter around her body. 

"Oh, but I don't. It is very noticeable." Arya rests on her back again, closing her eyes, a careless arm thrown over her own face and finishing the conversation. "This is how the braavosi fight."

Sansa lies awake for a very long time after that.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

She didn't lie. Sansa doesn't _miss_ Tyrion, but she notices his absence in daily, mundane things, a little void shaped after his small body. His empty chair during supper; the silence where his steps and voice echoed through hallways and rooms; how her chambers and bed feel twice bigger and colder without him at the end of the day. It doesn't hurt her, but it is there, and she can't help but perceive it. She tries to work until late, until complete exhaustion, until she is sure Rickon is _truly_ upset with her persistence in making him learn all the names of the Lords of Winterfell during the Age of Heroes. "What is _wrong_ with you?" he protests, and flounces off from the room to train with Arya.

So when he gets home, one week later than planned, she is not the only one releasing a impossibly long breath of relief. The sun is high in the middle of the sky; the snow is falling relentlessly when the guards blare their horns. She commands them to open the gates, and a bath to be prepared for Tyrion and another for Pod in the meantime. They hurry inside the Great Keep, and all the servants and maids crowd around them, helping to unload all that luggage, dry and safe from the cold: carrying the barrels to the larders, the trunks with clothes to the rooms. Tyrion orders the servants to be very careful with one particular baggage, a big one, covered and surrounded by layers and layers of thick furs, and Sansa takes a minute to observe him. Her lord husband is clearly bushed, the blonde of his hair covered by snow-flakes, ice on his lashes and beard. She nearly smiles. "Welcome back, my lord? And Ser Podrick," she greets him, and the boy nods to her. "You both look miserable."

"I feel miserable." Tyrion breathes in deeply; takes one of his gloves off, flexing his fingers and then looks at her face. He does what he always does – lingers his eyes on her a second too long, and opens his mouth to say something, but Arya interrupts him, spying on the furred luggage.

"Is this –"

"Yes," he interrupts her in return, taking the other glove off. Sansa is suddenly aware of his bare hands.

"There's a bath prepared for you upstairs," she says, politely. "For you too, Podrick."

"That is very kind of you, milady," Podrick says, courteous as always, and the corner of Tyrion's mouth goes up in a smirk, pulling the scar with it. Something gleam in his eyes, a dark amusement.

He removes his cloak, his shoulders and neck clearly stiff, and looks her in the eye again. "Thank you, my lady. I appreciate it greatly. If you'll excuse me...?"

She doesn't know why her head feels dizzy, her answer coming faster than necessary, "Of course," and Sansa doesn't look back to watch him leave. Instead, she tries to occupy herself, helps the staff until everything is in the right place, gives one or two instructions to the servants, and only then follows her husband's last steps.

When she knocks on the door of their chambers and no one answers, Sansa carefully opens it, only to find out that her lord husband is asleep. _Inside_ the bathtub. 

His dirty clothes are huddled on the ground next to a chair, where perfectly folded and clean clothes had been placed, just as a towel and a basin with soap. The light coming in from the open casement casts shadows on his face. His head is thrown back resting on the edge of the tub, his chest evenly rising and falling, and she suddenly thinks he could slip and drown.

There is a way in which Tyrion's body haunts Sansa.

She remembers the riot in King’s Landing. She remembers how heavy Harry had felt above her, how his weight crushed her chest, squeezed her lungs, making it hard to breathe while he whispered _Alayne Alayne Alayne_ in her ear. The slender form of Petyr lurking about made her hands unsure, her stitches imprecise, her mouth tickling where he’d kissed her. She remembers how immense Sandor was, something between a solace and a threat.

All male bodies are weapons, armed or unarmed; Tyrion's is no different. Of course they were perpetually water-dancing around each other, but at least it was a defensive stance. No attacks, as long as he kept his distance – and he always did.

And then it hits her– the memory of his nervous hands on her skin, and the coldness in their wake when he first decided to leave her alone. ( _Open your eyes, Sansa_ , he’d said with his baritone, soft tone, _open your eyes_.) He won't harm her. He doesn’t want to. He is small, his members stunt. She was home, now. She could run. She could scream. She could easily put him away. She knows that.

But to know and to believe – these are different. It takes a heart to be a believer. It takes a step of faith; a risk.

And so, she closes the door behind her and approaches the tub with silent, gauged steps.

His body is full of demons. Most don't even belong to him; they are Tywin's, Cersei's, Joffrey's, and she conjectures about the names of the demons hidden under her own skin through his eyes. She needs to exorcise him of them all – to recognize in his misshapen form more than the condensation of her particular hell.

Sansa kneels beside the tub, her fingers curling around the cold border. He never undresses in front of her and she doesn't cultivate the habit of watching him sleep (he is always the first to rise, anyway). There are bubbles on the surface of the water, enough to cover part of his body, but not all of it, and she observes his shoulders, a big scar on his right side, the blond hair covering his partially submerged chest, his short but muscular arms. Maybe he is not as weak as she imagines, but the goosebumps on her nape and spine are not fear. Oh, Sansa knows fear. This isn't it. Nothing tells her to run. 

She fixes her eyes on his face. There's wet hair falling over his closed eyes, a full beard covering part of his completely healed scar, hints of a sharp jaw-line, the curve of his mouth, his almost nose and the air flowing in and out of it in a calm rhythm. His expression now is tired, but peaceful in a way that it never is when he is awake. Vulnerable, she realizes, like a _child_ : harmless. She thinks of a younger Bran, before the war, before the fall, before everything. It pains her, but just a little.

One of her hands dive in the water. Tepid. Sansa slowly approaches him, her wet fingers hovering in the air only three inches away from his face, and then she realizes she is not even breathing. She draws closer, removes one strand of pearl-blond hair from his eyes, lets the air escape through her mouth with a strangled gasp.

And then he blinks twice and looks at her. She retracts, heart fastening inside her rib cage like a bird fighting for freedom. Suddenly, all the weariness is back in the lines around his eyes, frowning his eyebrows, twisting his mouth. He visibly flinches away.

"What are you doing here?" he scolds, trying to lump the bubbles around him.

His voice is like stones hidden under thick snow; her feet skid, but she steels her spine, even if her own voice quivers. "I saw you were asleep and... I was afraid you would drown," she explains, spontaneously putting more distance between them, but then she thinks, _No. I'm not afraid of you. I'm not._ "I am sorry, my lord. I didn't mean to startle you." 

His lips are pressed against each other in a thin line. "The journey was tiring, is all."

"I see," she nods quietly. "Your shoulders are tense. Let me help you."

"I am fine," he answers, but she is already kneeling behind him, gently pushing him away from the wall of the tub. "You'll soak your gown."

Sansa ignores him. Sweetrobin often needed massages, and she is surprised to realize her fingers remember the task more than her brain does; they explore Tyrion's shoulders, feeling his strained, almost solid muscles under her touch. This is the first time, Sansa realizes; the first time they _intentionally_ touch each other since... He hisses a breath and she softens the pressure in her hands. "Too hard?" she asks, the words shivering, just as his body.

"No," he shakes and lowers his head, sighing. She can hear him swallowing, his strangled words. "You don't have to do this, my lady."

"I know," she murmurs, and resumes her work, seeking for the tension and massaging each spot until it looses, along his spine, in his neck, between his shoulder blades. He slowly relaxes, and makes no sound other than a gasp or two, so restrained she can barely hear him. When she is done, her gown is actually damp around her breasts, and the palms of her hands land over his skin; he has scars, old and healed, like scissors, on his back. _Who did this to you?_ , she never asks, but her fingertips unconsciously travel delicately along the whipping marks, not massaging and not caressing, but discovering him. He leans towards her touch with a tired sigh and she wonders if this is wrong, to feel attracted, entranced by his _weakness_ , what does this say about her. Her fingers instinctively crawl all the way up to his neck, because she needs to understand his limits; she needs to know _where_ she is, _who_ he is; but when he realizes it, Tyrion suddenly starts.

"I'm sorry," she murmurs immediatly. "I didn't–"

"Maybe you should leave now," he says, severely, "I guess I can finish from here. Thank you for you services." And under his forced civility (forced, she knows, for there's no such thing as civility when someone is mapping your scars), she hears undertones of some angry, terrified thing, almost childish again, and suddenly realizes how much _he_ is afraid of _her_ ; she wants to reach out again and say, _I understand you, I do; tell me your story, what happened to you_ , but instead, Sansa nods, gets up and leaves. 

She closes the door, rests her back against it. Her limbs shake – hands and legs, her heart pulsing in her throat. When she closes her eyes, palming the hollow curve below her left breast, she can still hear him like an echo, louder than her steps. _You should leave now. You should leave._

When the trembling breaks, she walks away.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

They ignore each other for three days until Tyrion, as usual, breaks the silence.

There's a screen in their bedroom, so they can dress and undress far from each other's sight, and by the fourth night Sansa comes out of it wearing her night gown, ready to rest, when he raises his eyes from his book. His back is resting against the headboard, a candle burning by his side of the bed, and he says, nonchalantly, "I brought something for you. From White Harbor."

"Podrick told me," she murmurs, finishing her braid. If he wants to pretend nothing happened, then she will play along.

"Not for the house," he explains, as if irritated with himself. "For _you_."

"Oh." Her forehead creases. "A... gift?"

His smile in response is lopsided as always. "I believe this is how they call it these days. Yes. A gift." He points with his chin to a bundle resting atop her table, a red velvet cloth tied up in a golden ribbon. She had noticed it, but didn't ask him what it was; since the bath incident he had consistently avoided her, even retiring to bed way sooner than her. Sansa was unsure if he felt angry or ashamed, and was feeling angry _and_ ashamed herself. If their marriage was a dance, it was like she had stepped on his feet, moved faster than the soundless music of their days.

She opens the package, the knot giving in easily when she tugs it, revealing a book, used but in good condition. She smiles to herself when realization dawns on her, her index-finger delineating the title on the cover, a gold, cursive style, _The Romance of the Rose_ , framed by red flowers and green leaves. There's a part of her that can't help but think of Highgarden, the Tyrells, Margaery, Willas, and lost dreams, but when she gazes back at him, and he is apprehensively studying her reaction, it feels like a really small part. She grabs her lower lip between her teeth.

"This is beautiful," she whispers. There's so much silence between them; she doesn't need to speak louder than that. "Why now?"

He takes his time searching for words, until they come out in a rush. "I was rude to you," he finally says, diverting his eyes from her, but closing his own book, one finger marking the page. "At the bath."

She licks her previously bitten lip and looks down to the book on her lap again, feeling the worn pages. "You were." She waits, but when he speaks nothing more, an indignant tone colors her voice. "Is this your attempt at an apology, my lord? Are you trying to _buy_ my forgiveness?"

"I _am_ apologizing," he mutters, defensively, and Sansa chortles under her breath.

"You are terrible at it." He looks at her startled and she suppresses a smile. "Repeat after me: _I am sorry, my lady, for being rude to you with no reason at all_."

"I _had_ reasons." He bites the inside of his left cheek to prevent from smiling, too. "And I would never try to buy you. You Starks are impossible to corrupt." There's a softness in him, then; minimal, but for now, sufficient.

" _Awful_ , my lord," she shakes her head in feigned frustration, and comes to sit beside him on the bed. When she is comfortable under her furs she looks to the side, to his face, so he can see what she is unable to speak. "You are truly awful at apologies."

"I am. Part of my Lannister inheritance." He looks her in the eye in that unsettling way, the way that makes her feel naked and exposed as if he could see right through her walls. "I'm sorry, my lady. I didn't –" He stops, presses his lips against each other quickly and decides to start over. "I'm sorry for the way I treated you."

"You are forgiven," she says, feeling some strange emotion coiling up in her lower belly, something that urged her to hug him out of the sudden. She keeps the emotion under control. "And I am sorry, too. I interrupted you in a private moment. It was... Improper."

"It _was_ improper! That is what I'm trying to _say_."

She can't help a short laugh, and slides down until she is laying on the mattress, counting the timbers on the ceiling. There is a implicit pact in their words, light and playful as they may be, that they will come back to leave each other alone. But Sansa still remembers how he leaned into her hands, how he eased at her touch; how brave she had felt. The memory is surprisingly hard to let go.

"Arya told me about the glass panels," she finally says. "I would say there was no need for that, but it would be an obvious lie."

She hates, _absolutely_ hates, the proud, crooked smile that shapes his lips, his eyes still on the pages of his book. "Is that your attempt at gratitude, wife?"

She rolls her eyes. "Very amusing."

"Maybe you need lessons too. Repeat–"

"Thank you," she cuts him off hardly, before he can start rambling boastfully about... Whatever. "In the name of the North."

"Hm." He looks down to her. "The North, you say."

"Yes," she nods, not trying to fight her smile anymore. "The whole North."

"I suppose the North is very thankful for the romance, too?"

"And thank you for the gift." This time there is no joke in her voice. The words come heartfelt and sincere and almost weak in their vulnerability. "I sincerely liked it."

For a moment, something in his face changes; it becomes pleading and soft at the same time, like a cool breeze during a hot, summer, southerner day; and she believes he will reach out to touch her face. For a moment she almost wants him to do it.

"That makes two," he whispers, instead, the unrequited desire leaving, and he is all tenderness now, which is rare; his words are almost _sweet_ , or as sweet as he could make them.

"Two what?"

"Smiles."

"Are you counting?" She is almost offended, but how much can you be offended when someone confesses to collect your smiles? "I _smile_! All the time."

"Not in my presence," he replies, softly.

She is the first to look away from him, his scrutinizing look suddenly unbearable, turning her back as she does every night. She wonders if he can hear the persistent smile in her voice, muffled against her pillow, "Goodnight, my lord."

His smug smile is clearly audible in _his_. There's a noise of a page being turned too. "Sleep well, wife."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title of the chapter comes from "Another Year", by Amanda Palmer.  
> 


	5. need you like water in my lungs

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there is **description of violence** in this chapter; it's nothing lethal, no true harm is provoked, but for those who feel uncomfortable with this kind of thing, please be warned.
> 
> actually this whole chapter is kind of dark. Sorry.

 

 

 

> You can’t get out of this one, you can’t get it out of me, and with this bullet  
>  lodged in my chest, covered with your name, I will turn myself into a gun, because  
>  it’s all I have,  
>  because I’m hungry and hollow and just want something to call my own. I’ll be your  
>  slaughterhouse, your killing floor, your morgue and final resting, walking around with this  
>  bullet inside me  
>  ‘cause I couldn’t make you love me and I’m tired of pulling your teeth. Don’t you see, it’s like  
>  I’ve swallowed your house keys, and it feels so natural, like the bullet was already there,  
>  like it’s been waiting inside me the whole time.  
>  Do you want it? Do you want anything I have? Will you throw me to the ground  
>  like you mean it, reach inside and wrestle it out with your bare hands?  
>  If you love me, you don’t love me in a way I understand.
> 
> "Wishbone," by Richard Siken

 

 

 

Tyrion spends a lot of time observing his wife when she is not watching. Old habits, after all, die hard.

Arya sees no point in having a Sept since no one prays to the Seven in Winterfell. "Tyrion does," his wife tries. He only snorts, and so does Arya: "Tyrion doesn't pray and you know it." "Podrick prays to the Seven," Sansa recalls. Everybody likes Podrick, so they decide to think about it after the Guest House is finished. And as they pass to another topic, she looks through the window, gazing at nothing, and for a moment she is gone. He touches her elbow under the table before anyone notices she is drifting away — she blinks once and comes back to the meeting, and he asks himself, _where were you?_

This is Sansa. Always surrounded by her people, but always alone. Always hiding somewhere in the secret chambers of her mind. Polite and courteous, but never warm. Sansa, convincing stubborn lords to do her will without them even noticing it. Sansa, economic and precise with her words, efficient as a clean cut through the guts. Sansa, patient and kind with Rickon, but firm as a mother. Sansa, who sometimes still asks _please_ to her servants. Sansa, tired and silent at the end of the day, some nights hardly sparing him a glance. Sansa, his wife, a complete _stranger_.

She maddens him. Sometimes he can't help the sharp edges of his words when they talk, as if he is turning himself into a knife. Maybe if she bleeds, he thinks, she will feel more human, not so cold. If it hurts, she will lose her control a little, just a little. Just so she won't be so rounded and perfect and completely out of his reach. There is a balance between them, but it is always one step away from hanging and crashing them onto the ground. He wonders what will come after. What will happen when they speak the wrong word in the wrong tone, when they touch wrong, when they stare wrong. _When,_ and not _if_ , because he is sure it will happen, eventually. (He assumes it will be his sign to leave the North, give her that damned annulment and come back to the West. Dany will be angry. He doesn't care.) 

Tyrion knows Sansa feels it, too, the air charged and dangerous when they are in the same room. Sometimes, he catches a glimpse of who she is behind that mask. When she holds his gaze for a second too long; when she works too much, and he brings a tray of food to her solar because she forgot to eat, and she looks at him as if she is seeing him for the first time, somehow; when she invades his baths and touches his scars. He can see the terror in her eyes – she is afraid to move, to breathe, much like he is. This must be the reason why she is so careful, while he... Well. He tries to keep his distance. But the monster inside him wants to burn everything that is beautiful. He wants her, because of it and despite of it. But usually the tension will leave him frustrated, and _hungry_ for blood.

He doesn't know for how long he will keep the beast under control.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tyrion is inside the castle when it happens, which means Sansa is nearby. He is still barefoot after his bath, and something sharp penetrates his right heel. His first reaction, of course, is to curse, louder than usual. He supports himself on one foot, leaning against the wall, trying to remember why exactly he is _here_ at this hour of the day, and not out there. He remembers he promised to help Rickon with his lessons, and then tries to calculate what are the odds of hurting himself _indoors_ while Winterfell is literally a _construction site_. Tyrion curses again, jumping his way to the bed, leaving a trail of drops of blood behind him, and searches for the object under his foot.

Sansa arrives just when he finds it: a wooden splinter sharper than Arya's sword, half the size of his little finger. She sees the blood first and stops at the door. "My lord? I've heard—"

"Don't worry, my lady," he grumps. The splinter is out, but the blood keeps flowing from the wound. His fingers are red. He tries to keep the memories at bay.

"What happened?"

"Nothing," he dismisses, but it sounds ridiculous, because of course something happened. He sighs. "I've stepped into a splinter, is all."

His wife only nods. She leaves the chamber and comes back with a basket full of white towels and a basin with soap, in one hand, and a bucket with water in the other.

And then she kneels.

She kneels in front of him, ignoring the dirt and the blood, placing the basket and the bucket on the floor by her side. The view is so _disturbing_ he can't even react, at first. "What are you doing?" he finally asks, his voice flat. He is looking _down_ at her, down. Nothing about this situation makes any sense. "My lady, get up. Please."

He sounds ridiculous again: what she is doing is obvious. She studies the wound with meticulous eyes. "It's not deep. You will be fine."

_Well, she is kneeling for you, Imp. Isn't that what you wanted?_

"I'm already fine," he says through clenched teeth, trying to take his feet from her hands. "I'm sure someone else can do it. This is no work for a lady." 

(What he truly wants to say is, _don't you think it is too late for that?_ , and gods, why, why does she keep trying to touch his scars?)

"Don't be silly," she murmurs. "And stop moving."

He tries to obey, but there is a tornado in his mind, something tearing him down out of the sudden, and Tyrion can't properly name it.

They have never talked about it, he realizes, about their first marriage. ( _Of course we haven't,_ he thinks. _We never talk about anything that matters._ ) They have never mentioned Cersei's or Joffrey's names. They have never talked about King's Landing, and the fact she ran away and left him to take the fall and die, and everything else. It suddenly feels like all dead things between and behind them are getting up from their graves, at once, and he prepares his soul to war.

"I never knelt for House Lannister." His wife doesn't look up as she pours out the content of the bucket on his foot with the help of a empty cup. The water is freezing; he hisses a startled breath as she washes the dirt away, particularly around the wound. "Is that what is troubling you?"

He doesn't know what to say. There is nothing to be said.

"And I don't regret it. But when you stood on the back of that fool, I looked at you." She continues, focused on her task, until his foot is completely clean. "And I saw your face, and realized you hated to be there as much as I did." One of her hands holds his ankle as she brings the soap to the wound and rubs it. The white lather becomes a light pink when blended with the blood, and she pours out more cold water on it. "And then I knelt. Do you remember that? I knelt, and you kissed me."

He remembers, then, as if the scene is happening right now, a kiss that tasted of her tears. _With this kiss I pledge my love, and take you for my lady and wife_. She dries his foot with another towel and takes a piece of soft cloth, wrapping it around the wound. The blood stains it red immediately.

"I never knelt for House Lannister," she whispers. "But I knelt for you." She ties the tips of the cloth tightly over his foot, and finally raises her head. Even now, looking up from under him, she still looks every inch a Queen. "You should... Remember that, my lord."

"My lady–"

"You must rest for today," she recommends, getting on her feet. He is taken aback by the hastiness of her moves and hurries to steady himself, placing his palms on the mattress as she straightens her skirts. A useless gesture: her hands are wet, her gown is dirty and bloody, and it leaves her condition messier than before. She notices, and sighs. "And I... I must clean this. Tomorrow you shall certainly feel better. Ser Podrick will come to help you."

She is looking down at him again, like it should be. There's coldness in his bloody hands, cold filling the room when she leaves. He feels cold all over.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tyrion always knew this — past his love and past his hate, he would be left with nothing.

This was the main reason why he held on to his hate for so long, once his love died. It had served him well. Hate is a good fuel, he discovered, specially for the brain, but in the end it had left his heart damaged beyond repair. Had he a functional soul, a heart of flesh and not of stone, he would try to love Sansa. He would try to be kind to her. But all he sees when he looks at her, now, kneeling for him, is a mocking court; he hears laughs echoing through the throne room. He sees the contempt and the fear in her eyes, _and if I never want you to, my lord?_ , never, never, why would she want a monster in her bed, in her home, in her life, why would anyone want that?

Deep down he knows he is running away from home, from the Rock, from the memory of Jaime's and Cersei's bodies upstairs and the blood in his hands, that first maddening moment, _(what are you doing, what are you doing?)_ — but he can't stay here. This idea was doomed from the start, _you should have known better, your fool, fool_ —

When Tyrion was a child he would hide in the crypts below the earth, next to Joanna's golden grave, to cry. (A Lannister, he knew from a very young age, never let the world see their weakness.) He knows Sansa hides her grief among her old golds and weirwoods. Arya can spend hours in the crypts, Nymeria by her side. Rickon doesn't cry; he practices sword-fighting with Podrick or Arya until his hands are bleeding, or disappear into his wolf's skin. Tyrion choose the Broken Tower for himself during his second week at Winterfell; he needed somewhere quiet, reserved, abandoned.

Podrick comes to help him; the boy offers him an arm and Tyrion grabs it. "Where are we going, milord?"

"To the Broken Tower." His free hand points to a bottle of wine. "And give me that."

Podrick hesitates. "Milord—"

"Don't question me. Just give me the wine, Podrick."

"Milord," the boy insists. He has grown more confident with the years, Tyrion had noticed. It is terribly frustrating. "Lady Sansa is a good lady—"

"Oh, gods. You too." He rolls his eyes. "Do you think I don't know she is a _good lady_? I know it better than anyone in this castle, Podrick. I wish I could forget it. If I have to vow that I won't hurt my wife _one more time_ , I swear it, I will end up hurting her just so you all will be _content_ with yourselves. Get me that damn wine. I'm not planning to murder her. I never needed wine for that." Podrick takes the bottle and gives it to him in obedient silence. "Good. Now, as I was saying — the Broken Tower, and you won't say a word about it to anyone."

Podrick nods. It is, of course, snowing and freezing out there, and as they walk unnoticed thorough the ramparts, their breaths pluming in front of their faces, neither of them say a word. Podrick keeps his pace slow with a patience that has to be a gift from the gods. Tyrion firmly holds his forearm and tries to walk on his already stunted legs using just one foot. When they get to the Tower, half an hour later, Tyrion is not only cold; he is numb. He points with a nod of his head to the stairs, and then to a door. There is nothing in there but a chair, next to window facing the north. 

He sits on it, releases a white breath, takes a deep gulp of his wine and realizes he will never feel warm again. " _I knelt for you_." Much good it did to them. He is abruptly sick and tired of it, as he is of everything else — what is he _doing_ , thirty-two years old, faking a marriage like a child's play. She tries to reach out to touch him, but she can't stand the idea of being his wife in truth more than he can stand the idea of her kneeling to him. They are liars, he and Sansa, and he had enough of lies for a lifetime. 

He will leave. He has to.

Podrick stays by his side as he looks to the white fields. _Nothing can grow here_ , Tyrion says to himself, _and you were stupid to think otherwise. When will you learn?_

"Milord?" the knight-boy asks. "Shall I leave?"

"Sure, sure. Leave me." He takes a sip of his wine again. "Come back at dusk."

Tyrion doesn't look back to the boy as Podrick walks away. He is not even sure he is actually seeing the North. He is not imagining the Wall, far ahead, or the eternal Winter beyond it. He can only see blood. His blood in Sansa's hands, Jaime's blood in his.

There is nothing. There is _nothing_ , he feels nothing.

He bites his fist when he weeps to keep from crying out, even though there is no one to listen.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When he comes back to his chambers, Sansa is already there, sewing before the fireplace. She had been crying, too, he realizes. Her cheeks are red, just as her eyes. Podrick helps him get to the bed, and Tyrion dismisses the boy with a wave of his hand. Sansa raises her head, forgetting her needlework for a moment as she examines him. "You've been drinking," she states. Her eyes are colder than the Wall.

"I have." He takes his boots off; the wound is pulsing inside the dressing. There is always a flagon full of wine on the nightstand by his side of the bed. He takes it. "I stink. You may want to send me to sleep on the couch today." He shrugs. "I'm very small, as you know. I'll fit."

"There is no need for that." Sansa gets up and walks towards the door. "I'll order a bath for you."

"Oh, no. Don't worry." He shakes his head. He feels dizzy, but unfortunately, not drunk. Not anymore. "You don't want to sleep next to a drunk man, do you?" he puts the bottle away and crosses his arms before his chest, smirking. "Have you ever, Lady Stark?"

She turns around, tilts her head to the side slightly. He doesn't know if she pities him or is just trying to understand the reasons for his mood. "I'm not afraid of you, my lord."

"You should," he murmurs, staring at her from head to toes. "I'm not a good man."

"I know who you are," she says. He laughs bitterly and points a finger in her direction as she moves — she is searching for something in the drawers of her nightstand.

"You're wrong. You don't know me at all."

"I know you had the chance, but you never harmed me," she recalls, coming back with a small towel in her hands.

"Not yet," he mumbles, darkly. There is nothing he wants more than to hurt her, but there is nothing he wants less, too. "I've harmed lots of people."

His wife seems unshaken by his veiled threat, sitting by his side on the bed. "Let me see your foot." He places it on her lap before she can kneel in from of him again. She narrows her eyes as she examines the dressing. "Does it hurt?"

"No."

"Good." She returns it to him and gets up. "I'll order that bath."

"I don't want you here," he states. It comes out harsher than intended. She winces, but it is so quick that he thinks for a moment that it was just the wine, making it up.

"I'll leave," she offers. "Try to keep this clean," she points with her chin to the bandage. "I'll make another for you when you're finished."

The water is colder than usual. It washes away the last remnants of wine from his brain, and he stays in there for some moments after he is done, trying not to think about the tension in Sansa's shoulders when he arrived, the disappointment in her eyes. When he is fully dressed, he tries to walk alone to the bed and fails; he stops halfway, sits on the couch. The fire is alive on the hearth, flames hungrily eating each other in red and orange and blue, and he forces himself to watch them until his mind is empty. He doesn't know how much time had passed when Sansa comes in again, sitting by his side. He offers her his foot without resistance. _She looks so old_ , he thinks as she rubs something from a small bottle on his skin, something doughy and green. How many years? Six years? She must be eighteen, now. Not a child, of course, but still so young. She shouldn't look this tired.

"Why are you doing this?" he asks. She keeps her eyes away from his.

"I'm your wife. Am I not supposed to take care of you?" There is no warmness in her voice, though. Only a distant sense of duty, and something else, something he can't put his finger on.

 _'I knelt for you'. 'I'm your wife'. Do you think I need your pity, Lady Stark?_ "Don't mock me, my lady."

"I'm not mocking you." She carefully wraps another fresh cloth around the wound. It isn't bleeding anymore. "You tried to take care of me. I'm merely returning the kindness."

"Oh, I see." He chuckles dryly, because the irony. Oh, the irony. "Paying your debts. As a true Lannister."

She stiffens, gives the foot back to him. "I'm not a Lannister."

"You're my wife. You just said it." He narrows his eyes. "You can't have both."

"What do you mean?" she murmurs, and it sounds _sad_. He loses a breath. She used to be merciful, he recalls, absently. The creature in front of him is determined to make this conversation as difficult as possible.

"Just say the word, my lady," he says, tiredly, hating how much it sounds like he is begging. "You don't even need to come back to King's Landing, I can get this annulment for us. You're so young, so beautiful. A high-born lady like yourself will have many a man fighting for your hand, just... If you don't want me here, let me go."

She shakes her head in disbelief while he speaks, and her words are venomous when she finally answers him, after what seems an eternity. "You are such a coward."

Tyrion doesn't believe his ears. "Pardon?"

She stands on her feet, her closed fists trembling. "Leave if you want to," she spits out, and he thinks he finally did it. He found a crack on the walls of her courtesies; he broke her. He doesn't know why it doesn't feel like a victory. "You're not a prisoner and you are free to go. But this choice is yours, my lord. You don't get to throw it at me. I've made mine."

And before he can formulate an answer, before he can understand there is no way to answer her, she leaves again.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tyrion can't sleep.

He naps, once or twice, but wakes up startled and scared only to find the bed empty. Only by the third time he wakes and sees a silhouette by his side. It's a dark night out there. Only a half-moon, like the laugh of a mad king, shines against the blackness behind it, and little stars are dancing around like subservient vassals, casting a pale, shimmering light over them through the open window. Tyrion can feel Sansa's sobs shaking the mattress under them, more than he can see or listen to her. He hears nothing more than subtle gasps for air.

He reaches out one hand and touches her shoulder.

She recoils. He keeps the hand on her. "My lady, please. We need to talk."

Sansa turns to him and he can barely see her wet cheeks. Her eyes steal the starlight, the ice in them melted, liquid, flooding. On the same level of his eyes, as in that day she knelt for him. He suddenly thinks it is an odd kind of honor, what he is witnessing now – Lady Stark, crying. But he doesn't feel honored at all. There are so many things they need to say, so many ways to begin, but all that comes out is a poor "I'm sorry," so low he is not sure she heard him, and he is sorry – for everything that has been done to them, for everything they've done to each other. But when she lays a hand on his chest, over his tunic, closes her fingers in a tight, small fist, and hits him, he knows she has listened. And then she hits him again, and again, and again; Tyrion lowers his head and doesn't fight her. She isn't hurting him, but her punches are stronger than he would have assumed, and they make hollow, mute sounds that muffle her cries. Even when her free hand crawls up to his exposed neck, scratching him, clawing until he is sure it is drawing blood, he lets her.

Because he is feeling it; her anger, her frustration, her pain, his skin burning. It is better than feeling nothing at all. It makes him feel alive, and for the first time since – since ever, maybe, it feels real. He knows, then, he could never hate her for not loving him; he would never be able to hate her, just as he would never be able to love her.

When she stops, he holds her wrist and waits.

"Don't you ever talk to me like that again," she commands. Her voice is sharp as valyrian steel. "Never again, Tyrion, or I swear it by all the gods–"

"I won't." He doesn't want to hear the end of it, not now. Her fingers are closing around the fabric of his tunic and then palming his chest. Her hand is so small. He talks without thinking about it, just instinct. "I promise, I won't."

"I don't care about your promises, or about your vows, or any of your words. Just don't."

He brings her hand to his mouth, his lips brushing the knuckles. She lets him. "That's fair enough."

"And you won't get drunk again."

It isn't a request. "Alright." 

And they stay silent. Something is born in the darkness and in the silence, in the lack of words or excuses or explanations or light, in that momentary truce. Tyrion is sure it is not something just in the air, implicit – no; the newborn thing is solid and breathing and raw. It is not love, but it binds them together in a way his cloak over her never did. (They have never fought before. They have never cared enough.)

Tyrion gauges the distance between his face and hers by the rhythm and warmth of her ragged breathing. Narrow. He realizes their hands are still on each other: his on her shoulder, hers on his neck. For some reason, she doesn't move away, and in a rare and mad impulse of bravery he comes closer, because it is so dark, anyway, and she won't see a thing. Just an inch, just enough to press his lips on her forehead. His hand slips to her hair to sooth it, like ice over a bruise, and her body relaxes at the touch, as if she'd been holding that breath for hours. Only then she begins. "I was afraid of you, before." She talks as someone who raises a white flag. "Because I had nothing to give you."

"I know that." He could say _I never wanted anything from you_ , but apparently they were trying to be honest. "And it's alright, my lady. It wasn't your fault. You were a child."

"Do you hate me?" she asks in such a frail voice that he feels the ice in the corners of his mind melting. "For bringing you here, for..." She trails off. It is easy to hear what she doesn't have the courage to say out loud, though.

"I don't," he confesses. "Hating you is exhausting." A pause. "Do you? Hate me?"

He always thinks that maybe, if she did, the guilt would at least be more bearable, like some twisted form of justice. She sighs. He feels the air from her lungs in his neck. "I'm sorry. No." Her voice gets heavy with sleep. "I never did, and I still don't." Her fingers slid across his skin until they reach the back of his head, as if they've done this a thousand times before. Her touch leaves goosebumps in its wake. He doesn't know if she is completely lucid; she sounds too tired, too drowsy. "I don't want to do this anymore. We should... Try to be friends."

"We should," he says, not daring to bring her body closer to his, as he wished, neither to withdraw. _I thought you said no more promises_ , he thinks, but it would sound needlessly sour. "But now, you should sleep."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(There is a lot of unsaid things, still, but all Tyrion thinks is 

_this is all I ever wanted from you._

It takes him some time to identify the feeling as _hope_. He hadn't felt it in so long. It is a ticklish, itchy thing.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When the sun rises, he untangles her fingers from his hair as quietly as he can. They don't talk about any of it again, but when she asks about his foot over the midday meal, there is more than duty in her voice and he tries really, really hard to keep his hopes low.

He decides to stay a little while longer.


	6. and I'm alone (but in another way)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just wanted to thank you all for your comments and kudos and general awesomeness. ❤️❤️❤️  
> 

  
  
  
  


> I'm running out of things to say.  
>  I've stopped stealing pages out of poetry books, but last week I pocketed a thesaurus and looked for synonyms for you and could only find rain  
>  and more rain  
>  and a thunderstorm that sounded like glass, like crystal, an orchestra.
> 
> "The anatomy of being," Shinji Moon

  
  
  
  


The glass gardens once were built in the northwest region of Winterfell, little more than half an acre of land hidden by the vast godswood, right beside the North Gate. Now there are only ruins: burnt glass and wooden battens, broken steel beams, rotten leaves, stumps and, for some unfathomable reason, white lilies. Under it all — among the wreckage, four or five surviving flowers. (Death, Sansa knows, is a headstrong, obstinate thing, but life is even sturdier, it seems). The edges were worn and black, they weren't even beautiful, but they were flowers, and she watches as her husband takes one petal on his fingers, barely touching it, seeming whiter against his black gloves. The petal loosens and falls. He keeps it.

The masons leave. It is still morning; they will come back after the midday meal and start cleaning the soil, but no one knows when they will properly start to build the greenhouse. The workers of Winterfell are just apprentices, improbable survivors of the War just as the white lilies around the dirty roots, well-meant volunteers; a glass garden demands a experienced blacksmith. But this is the hottest part of the castle, where the hot springs burn more intensely under the ground, and so, despite the destruction around her, Sansa stays behind a little longer.

She takes a quick look at Tyrion, standing three yards from her. He is toying distractedly with the white petal between his fingers. They don't spend much time alone, and she seizes the opportunity to study him. _He seems smaller_ , she thinks with herself. Maybe it's just the effect of all the layers of dark furs; she remembers the proud man, with his head held up high, dressed in the finest Lannister crimson and with golden rings on his fingers, at court. _And older._ This has nothing to do with cloaks. It's in his eyes, in the corners of his mouth, in his shoulders.

It is very hard to be demure with someone when you wake up with their dry blood under your fingernails. A lot of the words that once came naturally to Sansa now get caught in her throat when she is near her husband. _If it pleases you, as you wish_ : they hang in the air, present but unspoken, latent vows that they no longer have the energy to pretend that will be kept. She hardened her voice, he softened his; Sansa hopes they will meet halfway. In the meantime they spend a great amount of time communicating without words — subtle looks in crowded rooms, a hand on her elbow when he needs to hold her attention, a tilt of her head in his direction during important reunions. Sansa has no idea how much has been lost in translation, but they are getting better at it, she can feel. 

For instance: right now, she is pretty sure he is thinking about how warm it is here. He always complains about how cold it is up in the North, and now his gloved hands are not even inside his pockets. 

She sits on a big round stone and wraps her arms around herself. "It will feel even warmer when the glass garden is finished," she says, simply. He looks at her as if he had forgotten she was there at all. "More than any southerner summer day."

"It is really warm. And silent." He points vaguely to the godswood behind the gates. "I can understand the charm."

She feels the scent of trees from the godswood: muss, oaks, soldier pine; and remembers a conversation they had, ages ago, in King's Landing. _There are no devotions, my lord. No priests or songs or candles. Only trees, and silent prayer. You would be bored_. (She tries not to think about Dontos.) "You can come whenever you want, you know," she provides. It is only polite. The tension may be gone but she is still a lady, his wife and his host.

He chuckles dryly. "I appreciate the invitation," he says and kicks a little stone absently. "But I wouldn't bother your prayers."

"I wasn't asking for you to bother me." She doesn't come to pray to the old gods (assuming Bran doesn't count as a god), but no one needs to know that. "It is big enough for the both of us."

He gives her a lopsided grin. "I don't have the patience nor the faith to pray, and I need wine to meditate. I suppose it must be some kind of sin? To be drunk in sacred ground?"

Sansa chortles a little, because he really has a talent to turn everything and anything into a nasty joke, and refuses to dignify it with an answer. He looks around again, and closes his eyes. A cold breeze comes from the north and kisses their cheeks. His chest is inflated when he takes in a deep breath, his hair rippling, a harsh stubble covering his face, delineating his sharp, pretty jaw-line.

Looking at him this way, almost peaceful, Sansa is not completely sure Tyrion is still the kind of man that is bored by silence.

"Which sounds do you miss?"

She regrets the question immediately as soon as she says it. It sounds like a silly, childish thing to ask, and also a little weird. But he opens his eyes, crossing his arms, and thinks about it seriously.

"I miss the sound of the rain," he says, finally. "And the waves." The wind invites the leaves above them to dance. They attend, rustling softly in their branches, spreading wide to the bone-white sky, and for a blessed moment, Sansa almost forgets there had been a war. "Here everything is deadly silent. It's not just the godswood, it's..." A tired sigh escape his lips. "Everywhere."

"I'm sorry," she murmurs, and he smirks, amused.

"On behalf of the _land_?"

She chuckles. "I guess so." The snow does that. Turns the world mute, muffles all the noise.

( _I'm sorry this isn't home to you_ , she never says, another thing lost in translation. Or maybe not — he eyes her, examines her face. Nods, just once, almost imperceptibly.)

"And you?" he asks. "What do you miss?"

 _Everything_ , she thinks.

"I miss the sound of my father's steps." She waits. "And Arya's laughter." Arya never laughs, these days. "And—" She suddenly halts, because if she begins she won't ever be able to _stop_.

Tyrion is looking at her warily. _I'm sorry_ , he doesn't voice; she listens nevertheless. He keeps his distance, and she is grateful for it.

(The true question: _what is the sound of life to you? Of time?_ )

"Tell me how this place used to be," he asks, instead, quietly. If she tunes her ears, it is possible to hear kindness in him.

Sansa smiles sadly. "I don't think it would do us good. To dwell on the past."

"It's not for the past's sake," he shrugs. "I need to draw a draft for the rebuilding."

She angles her head, looks at him through her eyelashes. He is lying. They both know it. (She is grateful for it, too.) "My lord–," she begins, strangled and cautious. And then, like a confession: "I don't know if I can."

"You can." A red leaf whips about and falls right by his side. "Come on. Let's just try."

She _remembers_. Vividly. And she is afraid to speak of it out loud, afraid that if she materialize the words, they will hurt her like swords. But she also can't _not_ speak. The memories come like stones, out from her chest, from her bones, from under her skin. "There were three rows," she begins. "The flowers were cultivated right here, in the middle." Sansa gets up, and she is seeing it all. "Roses and chrysanthemums and daisies. Jasmines, pansies." She smiles. "When Arya was four she came here every day to study the habits of earthworms." She hears Tyrion chortling by her side, a distant sound, and walks around, remembering, remembering. "And we grew carrots, potatoes, tomatoes, lettuce, spinach. Mushrooms, basil," she looks up, sees the vines' branches crawling up the iron beams, Robb's hand reaching up. "Grapes. All kinds of berries, right there," she points to the easterner corner.

She talks. Only half of it is about the greenhouse. She talks about her mother's favorite tea (lavender), about the brewer's wife who once stole all the strawberries they had been growing for months, about the day Jon got sick and Old Nan made him cold soup with zucchini and he never ate zucchini again in his life, or when Bran climbed up his way to the roof and almost fell, or her lessons on the language of flowers, how it may change with the colors, did you know, husband, that a blue violet means faithfulness, but white violets convey candor and innocence? ("No. I didn't know"). And when she has covered every yard, she stops talking and waits for it to bleed, but it doesn't. It aches —pulses and screams— and she feels a terrible, familiar emptiness but not a _sadness_ ; not the all-consuming misery she was expecting, only a dull, stubborn melancholy, the kind that makes you want to smile, almost. 

They were very happy here.

She sees the glass garden for what it is now, and the air seems colder. Tyrion notices, because he takes a step closer to her — only one, not enough to touch her yet. "We'll make it grow again," he vows, low and sincere, not even looking her in the eye, and Sansa forgets to tell him they don't do this anymore, promises, _don't you remember, husband?_ , because she hates how easy it is for her to believe him.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


The northerners don't love Tyrion. They tolerate him, because he belongs to the Starks: it is unclear if he has adopted the orphans or if he was the adopted one, but it matters little, in daily aspects of life. Lady Sansa wants him alive, Lord Rickon reluctantly has learnt to value his company, even Arya — well, Arya really tried to hate him; but Tyrion adores Jon, and she can't hate someone who loves Jon, and who Jon _blatantly_ loves in return. (No one understands what is going on between Daenerys, Tyrion and Jon, but it is, clearly, something). _Nymeria_ likes him, for all the gods. Arya had no choice but to acquiesce.

So they abstain from killing him, and sometimes — sometimes, when they are drunk in ale at the end of the day, some of them can even laugh of his dirty jokes or his miraculous adventures. But not all of them.

Because — the problem is, people _talk_ , and neither Sansa nor Tyrion can stop them.

Sansa is in her solar, Lord Manderly's letter before her on her desk as she feels the beginning of a headache behind her eyes, when one of her men comes in to talk to her about her lord husband, because "your lord of Lannister" is reducing the portions of his workers to half their previous size. Apparently, Tyrion plans to starve Winterfell to death.

"Lord Tyrion is helping Arya with the rationing of the food, my lord," she explains, patiently. "I'm sure she can explain it to you. But our workers are growing in number every day, and our supplies will continue to be severely limited as long as we don't finish the glass gardens."

"If you would let me speak freely, milady?" Artos Flint asks. Sansa nods, steels her gaze. "We still don't understand why he is here. He didn't stop being a... Lannister."

 _He is here because I'm tired of men. He is here because I don't want another marriage. He is here because he tried to be kind. He is here because we need an alliance with the South and better me than Arya, or Rickon. He is here because I chose him._ "Tyrion is not like the other Lannisters," she says, instead. Tired, very tired. Of course it wouldn't be about grains reserves.

"Indeed! He is the worst of them! He killed his _entire_ family!"

(These are the rumors:

Tyrion Lannister killed the Boy King, Joffrey, and then killed his father with a crossbow; turned into a gargoyle, fled to Essos, transformed into a dragon and flew his way back home, where he poured out fire over the last members of his family in fury and revenge.

No, some would say. Tyrion Lannister stole a dragon from the Targaryen Queen in Essos, came back to destroy everything his father had built.

You've got it wrong, another would correct: Tyrion Lannister murdered his father, escaped from prison, came back home with an army of mercenaries to reclaim the West and tried to kill his brother, because he is full of envy and hunger for power. The Mother of Dragons is in love with him: she gave him a dragon, he never stole it, because she is as monstrous as him. They are lovers who came to burn the Seven Kingdoms to ashes.

Or, in other mouths, the Kingslayer had died defending their sister, whom Tyrion had always hated. He made her watch Jaime Lannister die, and then killed her. And the Queen is in love with Jon, the Lord Commander, not the Imp; the Queen _hates_ the Imp, because Jon Snow is in love with him, and not with her.

In every version of the story, the same thing happens: All Tyrion's enemies are dead, some of them in mysterious circumstances. Tyrion Lannister hates the Lannisters more than anyone else. Tyrion Lannister won Casterly Rock through battle. At some point, Tyrion, Cersei and Jaime met: only Tyrion came out alive. At some point, he and Daenerys and Jon met: none of them were the same after that. At some point, they fled to a land where Winter never ends and saved the world, but no one sings about Tyrion like they sing to Dany, or even Jon, because in the end, every version of the story is the same: Tyrion Lannister is a dangerous man.

Sansa never had the courage to ask him what, after all, had truly happened during the Great War.)

"We don't know if this is true. And he didn't kill Joffrey." He didn't kill Tommem, either. No one has heard about Myrcella in years, not even Sansa, who hears lots of things.

"He killed his mother, his father, his siblings—"

"This is nonsense, my lord. You can't blame a child for a death in the birth bed. It happens all the time." She is thinking about Jon, too. About Jon, and his face when he found out about Lyanna, and how she held him through the night. "And Tywin was an evil man."

"But he was his _father_!"

It's Petyr's face in her mind's eye, now. And mint. She almost feels it in the tip of her tongue. "Evil, still. Besides, no one knows how the twins died. We mustn't make assumptions based on mindless rumors. He has been nothing but solicit to us since he arrived. And the Queen granted him royal pardon."

She is not sure why she is defending him. Something in her guts twists and drops — because she knows, she knows, it could very well be true. It could. Sometimes it is easy to forget he is a murderer. She never forgets about her own crimes, after all.

(Tyrion dreams, whispers names. _Mother_ or _Jaime_ or _Shae_ or _Tysha Tysha Tysha_. She never asked him if she talks in her sleep, too.)

"That changes nothing, milady. We have children in the castle—"

"Lord Tyrion would never harm a child." This, at least, she knows for sure. She takes a deep breath and forces her voice to be firm, but gentle. There is no way to explain how she _knows_ Tyrion won't ever hurt her, and therefore none of her people. It would be a stupid move of his part, of course, and Tyrion is anything but stupid, but this is not the only reason, it's not even the main reason. _He owes me, you see? And he pays his debts._ Instead, she raises her chin. "My lord, I understand your reasons to be worried. But please; if you don't trust him, trust _me_. I wouldn't share a bed with him, I wouldn't bring him here, if I knew he would harm us. We are safe."

"There's this, above everything else," the man growls. "What he did to you."

(The rumors about Sansa are different.

Petyr Baelish, Harrold Hardyng, Tyrion Lannister, Aegon Targaryen, even Jon Snow.

Their ultimate concern is who is the man between her legs.)

"Tyrion did nothing to me," she says, calmly. "They forced him, too."

"Bad men always say they are following orders to justify their own depravity."

Sansa appreciates their fatherly protection towards her and Arya; she truly does. But this shouldn't be of anyone's concern. "He did nothing to me," she repeats. "He never bedded me in King's Landing."

How odd, she thinks, that a maidenhead, a piece of skin, can hold so much power. Artos Flint seems completely startled, and just after many seconds he is able to speak. "Why?"

 _Who knows?_ , Sansa thinks with herself, and shrugs as if it was of little importance. "I've told you. He tried to protect me from all the Lannisters. Himself included." When he keeps his silence, she frowns one eyebrow and sharpens her tone. "Do you have any more questions, my lord?" because he wouldn't ask. He wouldn't _dare_. And he doesn't; he shakes his head, leaves the solar in resigned silence, and Sansa smiles to herself. Now is just a matter of time.

The week hasn't even finished when some of the proudest northerner lords are seen sharing a flagon of wine with her lord husband over the dinner table. 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
(She finds the charcoal drawings of the glass garden among his letters and parchments, on his table, a couple of days later. There are three or four sketches; one of them has branches of vines scrambling over the iron frames, weighed down by heavy bunches of grapes, and a little boy next to a window. She knows it is Bran, even if the lines of his face are blurred, and her heart swells and hurts.

The following night, when he is ready to go to bed, she lowers her needlework to her lap and calls in a hushed voice. "My lord?"

He turns around. "Yes?"

 _Why did you kill my maid — I understand Tywin, but why Shae? And Jaime and Cersei? Did you kill them? Where is Myrcella? Why have you never touched me again?_ He never did, after the fight, not in the way she fears and waits: never caressed her hair again, never kissed her fingers. She can only remember he was soft.

"Would you mind a visit to Winter Town for me in the morning? We need more threads. And silks."

"Oh, I wouldn't. Sure." His attention is stuck on her work for a second and then comes back to her face. "Anything else?"

_Why are you still here? Why do you still care?_

"No, my lord. Thank you.")

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


" _When Love had made these commands_ ," Sansa begins to read out loud, " _I asked him: Sir, how and in what way can these lovers endure the woes that you have told me about?_ " She looks up quickly from the page to check if he is listening. His eyes are still on his own book, but he presses his tongue against the inside of his cheek, and so she continues. " _I am greatly terrified by them. How can one keep on living when he is in burning pain and sorrow, weeping and sighing, weighed down by the care and attention that he must give to every detail and every condition? Gods help me; I marvel greatly how any man, even one of iron, can live for a year in such hell_." 

He finally closes his book, marking the page with his finger, and looks at her. He sits opposite to where she is on the couch in front of the fireplace. She is reading the one he gave her a couple of moons ago, and sometimes she quotes her favorite lines, when he is nearby. He listens, shares witty remarks with her: sometimes, offers her another point of view of the characters or the lessons, but most of the time he just makes her laugh with his usual nastiness.

" _The God of Love then replied to my question with a good explanation: Fair friend, no one has anything good unless he pays for it. Men love a possession more when they have bought it at a higher price, and the good things for which one has suffered are received with greater thanks. It is true that no woe measures up to that which colors lovers. No more than one can empty the sea could any man recount in a romance or a book the woes of love_." She searches for his face again, and tilts her head slightly. "A Lannister wrote this."

"No!," he laughs. "We Lannisters don't have time for this. I've told you, the author was some pretty shining lord from the Reach. But please, continue," he asks, lightly amused. "The suffering goes on for a while."

"Why are you laughing?"

He smiles uncannily. "I knew you would like this part."

She narrows her eyes. It is annoying, how sometimes he acts as if he knew her every thought. He doesn't. He _doesn't_. "And how could you know?"

"Because of course you would quote the line about the necessity of self-sacrifice and the suffering of lovers, and tragedy, and..." he waves his hand about. "Those kind of things."

She would feel the need to defend herself if his voice didn't carry so much cynicism. She finds it distracting. "Did you even like this book? When you first read it?"

"I did, back then. Very much."

"But not now." It's not a question.

"No, wife," he says, gently. "Not anymore." His voice is always very deep – in moments like this, Sansa can't help but feel invaded by the mere timbre of it; she looks at him as if he had just pinched her, and he quickly adds, "but it is still a good novel! And it is true, won't you agree? We don't value that which cost us nothing. We know that no thing that truly matters comes freely."

Sansa weighs everything down in three seconds – the price, the debts, the years. 

Maybe she has made the right decision, after all. Isn't she home now? And _safe_? _Why do they fear you?_ , she wonders. _You're so easy to understand._

"Yes, my lord," she ends up saying. "I believe it is true. In a way. This is a good story. Thank you."

"I'm glad." And, nonchalantly, as he comes back to his own reading, "and this is a pretty dress."

"Thank you!" There's a proud and simple happiness in her voice, almost vain. She had spent her scarce free time in the last couple of weeks working on it: a velvet indigo dress with embroidered leaves in gray thread crawling up the sleeves. She uses a cloak over it during the day; no one ever sees it. "I made it myself."

"I know," he murmurs, unthinkingly.

Sansa often feels like her husband is ignoring her existence, avoiding her presence, or trying to forget they are married. They frequently retire to their chambers in different hours, go to bed separately, and sometimes spend entire days without even seeing each other. The mere idea that he is observing her paints her voice with a rare fondness when she asks, "would you mind, my lord?" and stretches her legs on the couch until her crossed feet are on his lap. 

He is stunned just for a second. "Not at all," he assures, and they come back to their respective books.

Later, when his thumb begins to softly stroke the skin of her heel, she doesn't flinch.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> some notes:  
> 1) I know nothing about greenhouses  
> 2) I lied. I'm incapable of writing small chapters  
> 3) any reference in this fanfic about pretty jaw-lines are credited to peter dinklage


	7. i move slow and steady (but i feel like a waterfall)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you guys are just the best. thank you all so much :)  
> here we go, with the "fluff" of "Fluff and Angst" in the tags?

  
  
  


> Dear Boy: Be the muscle,  
>  make music to the bone—risk
> 
> that mercurial measure  
>  of contact. There are those
> 
> who touch a body and leave it  
>  graceful: be that kind
> 
> of wonder in the dark.
> 
> "What I Mean When I Say Harmony (I)," by Geffrey Davis

  
  
  


Winterfell's household is unstable. Sansa welcomes anyone who begs for aid or protection; a lot of people come for the food, for shelter themselves from the lethal cold and recover from their wounds. Only some of them stay, offering their workforce; they don't ask for money — you can't eat gold — but they are not strong nor skilled men. It is a kindness, in the end, both from them and from Sansa. It is the most dysfunctional household he has ever seen, except for Brienne and Podrick, maybe, who are both too talented to be here, in this wasteland, at least the way Tyrion understands it.

(Brienne had spoken directly with him on her own free will only once. Sansa had explained, in succinct words, "You remind her of Jaime. They were friends, I believe." The silence that followed was fit to a crypt. He likes Brienne, though, if only because Podrick is clearly devoted to the woman, and, above all, the woman is devoted to Sansa. He wished he had the chance to ask Jaime about her. Tyrion paints him in his head, gilded, two hands: _did you give up on Cersei already, brother_ , he would've asked, in another world, in another life. _Always pitying the ugly ones of this world, I see._ There's something in Brienne, something loyal and pure and whacked, that reminds him of Jaime, too.)

They don't have a Maester. There's a fat, smart young man, called Samwell Tarly, though, who has read almost as much as Tyrion at his age. If he is not taking care of someone, Samwell — Sam, as they call him — is surely reading something. Tyrion had written to his aunt Genna, who holds the Rock in his name, asking her to send some of his old books to the North, for the boy as much as for himself. Sansa had smiled with the corner of her mouth when he said it to her. "Your books? Really?" There was— not a promise, but the ghost of it, filling up the empty space between his body and hers on the couch. He never answered her. She hadn't asked a proper question.

Last sons in inheritance lines and a lot of women and children, men with no great names, clans of the North: these are the people rebuilding Sansa's home. The men Tyrion brought with him are capable and disciplined, and are finally, after six moons, adapting to the daily snows. Slowly, Winterfell is taking form, starting to look like a castle again. Once a week they have the dinner meal together, lords and peasants, in the Great Hall. Sometimes the builders sing and dance, drunk and tired from work, like a defiant scream into the night, into the destruction. In those nights Tyrion thinks: life is very simple, after all. _Humanity_ is simple and fragile and embarrassingly foolish, this mysterious entity they gave their lives for. Everyone just wants some place to land, something to eat, a warm bed at night. He looks at Sansa, by Rickon's side, sometimes laughing with Arya, sometimes even drinking a cup of wine or two. (A reason to die for, to _live_ for, that smile of hers.)

There are a lot of missing pieces, still, but time, eventually, takes care of them. One afternoon, at the end of the day, Podrick announces someone by the name of Gendry Waters, who is waiting to have an audience with the lord of Winterfell. Sansa calls for Rickon and orders the man to meet her in the Great Hall. Tyrion finds his place in the corner, and observes: a young man, remarkably strong, with black hair and blue eyes, offering his services as a blacksmith. He has no manners, barely manages to be courteous with Rickon and Sansa, and his face is familiar but Tyrion doesn't know why.

"I know your sister, milord," he says, finally. Sansa stiffens and looks at Tyrion subtly. He nods and leaves the room, in search of Arya, listening the words echoing in the hallway. "Arya Stark? I know her."

She is in the Kitchens. Tyrion describes the man the best way he can, which is not much (black hair, blue eyes, a bastard). When he says the name, she all but runs in the direction of the Great Hall. He arrives there considerably belated. Arya is screaming at the man with a furious look in her face.

"You _idiot_!," Arya says, and punches the man in the shoulder. Hard. He holds her wrist as everyone watches in silent shock, Podrick and Sansa and Rickon and Tyrion and Brienne, this last one studying the bastard's face gingerly. "What took you so _long_? I thought you were dead!"

Arya demands a bed in the Great Keep for him.

Later that night, before Tyrion retires to bed, Sansa lifts up her eyes from the parchment before her. "Did he say he was a blacksmith?"

Tyrion almost smiles. "He did."

She nods and her attention comes back to the letter she was writing. "Talk with him about the glass gardens tomorrow."

"As my lady wife wishes," he answers, only half-mocking, and is rewarded with one of those tiny smiles he is learning to adore.

  
  


  
  


  
  


  
  


  
  


He sleeps as terribly as he always had. Sansa is no better. Often, he needs to wake her up in the middle of the night as she writhes by his side; his wife usually just turns her back to him again, mumbling a _thank you_ , and falls asleep.

His nightmares are different. Some nights he needs to literally get up to _breathe_ ; he walks to the window, spreads it open and lets the freezing wind numb his face, his lungs, until his mind is as blank as the towers of Winterfell, covered in snow. Sometimes, when she is too drowsy and her guard is down, Sansa calls from the bed, her voice muffled by the pillows and blankets around her: "Husband? Where are you?" He keeps his eyes on the courtyard. "I'm right here. I'll be there soon." She always falls asleep before she can see his word done.

He understands her. They normally sleep in a safe distance from each other (except for that one night), but even like that, to share a bed is oddly comforting. In King's Landing, he'd liked to hear Sansa's calm breathing in the morning, before he had to leave for the day. He still does.

One night, the sound of her distress awakes him as she fights some monster inside her own mind, kicking the sheets, murmuring _let me go let me go_. He turns to the side out of habit, shakes her by the shoulder: "my lady? My lady, wake up" and she does — gasping heavily for air, hands wrapping her own throat. He can see her eyes wide as plates, stealing the starlight, and when she turns her back to him, the frame of the blanket is trembling with her; maybe she is sobbing — he can't tell. She is always very quiet. But he keeps the hand on her shoulder, waiting for something to happen.

Later he won't remember who started it (he can't trust his memory, these days; wine kind of fucked up his brain). Sansa grabbed his hand and tugged at it, he took courage from the darkness to bring his body closer to hers, but he couldn't tell what happened first, or if everything happened at the same large length of time, slowly, both of them too hesitant and too brittle. They exchange no words as they settle in each other's unfamiliar, unresisting form: his chest pressing lightly against her back, one arm wrapping her waist from behind and resting below her breasts and her hand resting above his, his face hidden somewhere between her nape and the curve of her shoulder. (Her hair smells of lemons and flowers and fresh soap.) He is tense, and she is shaking, and they stand still as statues at first. After some minutes, her trembles fade and end; he synchronizes his breathing with hers — feeling the limits of her rib cage swelling and shrinking — and then, he feels it in her shoulders when she starts to relax, allowing him to relax, too – and it leaves him slightly breathless, how natural and intimate it is. She may have sighed when his chest pressed against her.

There are a hundred ways in which Sansa's body haunts Tyrion – the terrified look in her eyes during their first wedding night, the disgust as she studied his naked body; her fingers clawing the skin of his neck with anger as she cried; her hands on his back, fingers drawing the map of his scars. His own body is before his eyes every hour of every day. When he was a child, the maids and servants of Casterly Rock avoided to touch him unless it was strictly necessary. He spent years thinking it was normal; when he realized it wasn't, he started to think he had some contagious sickness. He was four when he understood that he _was_ the sickness. Sansa’s rejection never did anything but remind him of what he already knew and couldn't not know. She is like a walking mirror, reflecting his every flaw.

But it was very dark, and in the darkness, a mirror is harmless, powerless.

 _This is your wife. This is her body and these are her lungs and this is her_ , he keeps thinking, and he can't stop thinking.

She is the one to break the silence. It takes a lot of time; long enough for him to take note of every place their bodies are united, long enough for him to keep track of the rhythm of her breathing. "Does this bother you?" Her voice is very shy.

"What?" She dabs the hand over her belly. "Of course not."

"Robb hated to share a bed with me." He waits. It seems important. Sansa never talks about this one, Robb. "He used to say I was suffocating him."

He imagines a little Sansa — she is so damn _young_ , it wasn't even that long ago — holding her brother to sleep as he tries to untangle her limbs from him in a warless, idyllic, white world. He imagines Sansa in King's Landing, sleeping alone; Sansa, in King's Landing, still alone, but with him; and then in the Vale, sleeping with the Gods only know who, and he wants to hold her tighter out of the sudden. (He doesn't).

"I'm breathing perfectly fine," he murmurs. It is only half a lie. He waits a little more. "Does this bother _you_?"

She inhales, exhales. In and out, one, two, three times, before she answers, calmly, "No. I like it. It keeps me warm."

He nods. Yes. Warm, indeed.

Her scent makes him heady. He tries to breath in the skin behind her ear without invading her space more than he already is invading — and then he listens to it, a _giggle_. It occurs to him he has never heard it before. "Are you—"

"I am! I'm sorry!," she is seemingly ashamed, but soon giggles again, squirming. "It is just— your beard."

"What about my beard?"

"I'm ticklish on my neck and your beard keeps brushing against it."

For the first time since he came North she sounds like a normal eighteen years old. "Here?" he scratches his beard against her neck and shoulders; she flinches away, laughs, doesn't let go of his hand.

"Ouch! Now you're _burning_ me."

He kisses the spot by instinct, forgetting they don't do this, but apparently, she doesn't mind (and then again, they also don't hold each other at night).

"I'm sorry," he whispers, not knowing precisely what he is sorry about, and very thankful for the darkness.

She turns around, shifting until her face is hidden somewhere between his chest and shoulder, throwing one careless arm around his torso. This way his chin rests atop her head, his beard is really far away from any exposed skin, and she is still inside his arms. 

"Better now?" he asks, mockingly.

"Much better, thank you," she answers, smiling against his tunic. He wonders if she can hear his heart. She is so close. She is so _close._ She probably can. "Tomorrow you'll shave."

"But my lady, it serves me—"

"If I can bear the cold without a beard, so can you," she cuts him off. "You'll shave."

That is a terrible argument, but he keeps it to himself, because her laughter still reverberates in his limbs like a thunder. "All right." 

For some reason, he thinks about how hard it will be to leave in the morning without waking her up, but he tries to focus on other things. The pressure of her firm breasts against him, even with two layers of clothes in the way. He feels the dangerous, keen curve of her waist under his hand, and the tremendous effort that is _not_ to run his palm up and down the side of her body. He draws his hips away from her, subtly, just to make sure.

After a long time he notices her breathing is not getting slower. "My lady?"

"Hm?"

He waits three seconds to ask. "How are you?"

"I am well." There's a resigned tone in her voice. She sounds fifty again. "Just a nightmare, husband."

"Do we want to talk about it?"

"We don't." Her cheek rests on the crook of the arm under her. It is growing numb. He wouldn't move even for all the gold in the Seven Kingdoms. "We want to rest. There's so much to do tomorrow, and we are tired."

They know what is happening. They deal with it every day, when Sansa and Rickon hold court: after every war, the Kings and Queens and Wardens have to redefine the boundaries of their lands, redistributing it to new lords and new people, for a new beginning.

This – this is not like walls crumbling down; it is like removing old landmarks. Soundless.

And so it seems natural, like the logical next step, to bury his hand in her hair — not a light caress, as he once did, but feeling it between his fingers, running them down through her strands as far as his small arms allow him to, and then coming back to the top of her head and doing it again, slowly, and again, until she is sighing and accommodating herself closer in his small curve; until her muscles are unstringing. "Your hair is growing fast," he comments. She nods, hums her agreement, but says nothing else.

Later, when he rests his hand on her nape, she groans in frustration: "Don't stop." Her voice sounds drowsier than before. 

He can't help a chortle against the crown of her head. "Stop fighting sleep, darling," he says, and begins to slide his hand again. (He, too, is drowsy enough to let it slip past his teeth— _darling_ , soft like a poem.) "You need to rest, you said it yourself."

"I _am_ resting." 

This is the last thing she says.

When he is sure she is asleep, he kisses her brow. _Don't grow used to her_ , he drills his heart, uselessly, hopelessly, as sleep catches him. _Don't fucking grow used to any of it._

  
  


  
  


  
  


  
  


  
  


By the end of the week, in the middle of the morning, one of Sansa's girls — Jeyne, he believes — finds him with Gendry, planning the glass gardens, and says Lady Stark is calling for him in their bedroom. They rarely meet in private during the course of the day, and never in their chambers, but he attends. His wife is waiting for him on the couch across the fireplace, and by her side, over the nightstand, there are two basins, one full with water, another with soap.

She raises her head and smiles, kindly, only with her eyes; mouth still tied up. "Oh, there you are. Come here."

He walks cautiously in her direction because— there's a _razor_ in her right hand. It steals the sunlight and shines, too brightly for his senses. "What is happening?"

"I see you still haven't shaved," she explains. "We must take care of this situation."

He rolls his eyes, but comes closer, anyway. "Leave my beard alone, wife. It hides my face."

She lays a white towel on the back of the couch as he sits by her side and leans his head backwards over it. "I like your face," she says, casually, and he feels something like hysteria raising in his throat; he almost snorts a laugh, but instead his fists close at each of his sides as he stares at her. 

"That is... cruel. You weren't that cruel, the first time you married me."

She just almost-smiles again. "Don't be silly, my lord. Are you ready?" and suddenly he is acutely aware that Sansa Stark is holding a blade inches away from his face, which, by the way, is already missing important parts.

"Do you really know what you're doing?" he asks, eyes squirming, and she chuckles gracefully.

"You rode a dragon, you have been in wars," she wets her fingers in the first basin and spreads them through his face, the right, lower side of it. "You can't possibly be afraid of a woman with a blade."

"Oh, but a woman with a blade can do so many terrible things to a man," he comments, and her shoulders tense visibly as she takes a handful of soap and applies it on his right cheek, all the way down until his jaw-line. All the hints of a smile are gone from her eyes and lips, now. "I'm in no position to judge such woman, surely— Me, the monster who killed his own father."

She brings the razor down. A blade shouldn't be soft; and yet, she slides it on his skin like velvet. When she is concentrated at something, the space between her eyebrows frown together in the smallest of the curves, she presses her lips against each other in a thin line, her face assuming this serious, Stark-hard expression, whether she is sewing, at a meeting or... Shaving her husband's face, it seems. "Petyr wasn't my father," she declares, voice as hard as her face or her shoulders. "And from now on, you'll need to shut your mouth."

"Of course he wasn't," he says while she takes more lather and distributes it over his face. Tyrion doesn't like the way her mouth tugs down in the corners. "The whole Realm is in your debt for his life, you know."

Every time the name _Petyr Baelish_ appears in conversations, even at random, this happens: she steels herself, avoiding to look people in the eye. He knows she was responsible for his execution, he knows she had spent years under his tutelage, and he knows she pretended to be his daughter all along. (Some people say she did it, not in the name of the Queen's Justice, but in the name of House Stark, and that she used a knife that he had given her himself).

She slides the razor again, holding his chin in the right angle with her free hand. "For his _death_ , you mean? The whole Realm is in your debt for your father's death, then." Sansa taps the razor against the rim of the basin, cleans his face with more water, and then adds more lather. " _The world is built by killers_ ," she murmurs. It sounds incredibly sad, but there is a tenderness in Sansa that never leaves her; that resists and endures. He wishes he knew _how_. "A friend told me this, once."

"You're not a killer, my lady," he says when she retires the razor to clean it again. She needs to know this. "An execution is not a murder. It was the right thing, what you did. The honorable thing."

And he realizes – in the way she moves tiredly again to his face, in the quiet sigh that escapes her, in her evasive words – that she is still in _mourning_ for Petyr, that she speaks about him like an abandoned orphan. He knows it by recognition, his heart identifying the undertones of it way sooner than his mind; it's a different look in her eyes from that one when someone mentions Ned, or Catelyn, when she is just in plain, aching sorrow. 

"I know it was," she states, coldly. "I will accidentally kill you, if you keep talking."

She dabs two fingers over his mouth and he purses his lips, hiding them inside. Her face is very close; it is uncomfortable, in daylight, but she is so focused on her task that he seizes the chance to study her as she delicately shaves the bristles away, skilled and careful around the scar. She is so beautiful that sometimes it hurts him, like a physical blow. "Accidentally," he mutters when she retires the blade one more time. "The whole North would praise you if you _accidentally_ killed me."

Her eyes gleam again, just a little, with amusement. "That is not true."

She pushes his head, exposing the skin of his neck. He feels goosebumps running through his arms. "But it is."

"If it is, why do you trust me with a blade so near your throat?" she asks, and looks him in the eye for the first time.

"That is a really good question, wife, but you won't kill me; of that I'm sure." 

She starts to spread lather under his chin. "I've done it before. You just said it, that I could do terrible things to a man."

"I'm not saying you _can't_. I'm saying you won't."

"How can you be so _sure_?" Her voice is sly and mysterious, just when the razor reaches his neck, and for a moment he is afraid. He reminds himself this is the worst possible timing to be afraid, to have the vessels in his neck pulsing faster with something so honed right over them, but then he thinks, this is Sansa. This is just Sansa; _I know how you breathe when the candles are blown out. You don't believe I will hurt you. This is how I'm sure._

Still, he is no fool and won't play with his luck. He just speaks again when she retracts the razor. "It is not like you," he says, simply. 

"I'm not as good a person as you think I am," she says, and he feels the sharpness of the blade sliding parallel to his skin with ferocious precision.

He shuts his mouth, lets her finish the right side of his face, and before she begins on the left, he says, "You're not as bad as you think you are, either."

Sansa glares at him with regretful eyes. As if she is waiting for absolution, for a sentence, for a fair trial for herself. She shakes her head and brings the razor to his face again. "Hush, husband."

  
  


  
  


  
  


  
  


  
  


The first night was like a seal over a letter, and the following nights are just a repetition, a ritual.

They sleep apart, until Sansa wakes up in the middle of the night. If he is already there, she will merely rest her head on his shoulder, or his chest, as he rolls one arm over her. Some nights, he is watching the snow falling outside, or staring at the embers in the hearth, as if he could order them to burn in flames again only with the power of his eyes. "Tyrion?" she will call, anxiously, "come back to bed."

Under the sheets, she finds her place by his side, and he tucks her hair behind her ear, needlessly – he can't see her face, anyway. "Hello," he murmurs; holds her face, seeking her cheekbone, and runs a thumb over it. Darkness makes him notably braver, but not enough to completely forget her rejection, all those years ago. He waits for any sign of reticence, but when he only feels her body snuggling closer to his, he whispers, "I'm here. Try to sleep."

Sometimes she grabs his hand and places it in her hair. Some nights, he knows she doesn't fall asleep for a very long time, and he finds out he can't sleep unless she sleeps too.

He finds worthy of note that they are only able to hold each other in the dark, when everything else vanishes and there is nothing left but this need for something to appease the loneliness that threatens to swallow them whole. Sansa lies peacefully inside his arms, keeping his own nightmares at bay, and it's very hard to remember that neither of them wanted this marriage, in the first place. They never talk about it in daylight.

That night she wakes up silently and instead of turning her body to his, she pulls him closer, like that first time, and his arms enfold her from behind, under the many layers of blankets, their hands tangled together over her belly. He hides his smooth, not-tickling face between her neck and shoulder. "See," she says, and he can hear her smile. " _This_ is the reason why you should shave."

Tyrion smiles against his own will, and knows one more battle has been lost.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "The world is built by killers" is not in the books, but GRRM wrote that episode (S02E09 blackwater bay: my stannis feels, my tyrion feels, my sansa is the best queen ever feels, my sandor feels, all the feels all of them), so I'm using it shamelessly.


	8. i can feed this real slow, if it's a lot to swallow

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry for the delay! exams + sickness + life being crazy. :)

  
  
  
  


> Wherever you are, you know that I adore you  
>  No matter how far, well, I can go before you  
>  And if ever you need someone– well, not that you need helping,  
>  But if ever you want someone, know that I am willing
> 
> Wherever you go, well, I can always follow  
>  I can feed this real slow, if it's a lot to swallow  
>  And if you just want to be alone, well, I can wait without waiting  
>  If you want me to let this go, well, I'm more than willing
> 
> Because I don't want to change you  
>  I don't want to change you  
>  I don't want to change your mind
> 
> "I don't want to change you," by Damien Rice

  
  
  
  
  


When Sansa was a little girl, she wanted to be one of the _adults_. The tall, big people wearing worried scowls; making decisions; using words she didn't know. She would search for Uncle Benjen's lap when he came to Winterfell during dinners. She would study the way her lady mother moved and talked and she would act accordingly. She'd liked to play the Queen, not only the Princess. In her childhood dreams she was loved, admired, praised.

She misses this girl. Her grown-up heart is kind towards her. If she could travel back in time, she would pat her own child's red hair. Wouldn't tell herself the truth. Would let herself play pretend. Now she wanted to be free of it; she wishes her mind didn't look at everything and everyone as pieces moving, that her brain didn't plan outcomes and consequences in every word and action. Who, in the future, could turn against Daenerys, because of the North? Who could turn against the North, because of Daenerys? Who could resent and turn against the Starks, many years ahead, because of her marriage with Tyrion? Who could turn against Winterfell merely because they were still vulnerable, rebuilding, three surviving orphan children? ( _You're not a child_ , she tells to herself, strengthening her spine, hardening her mouth. _You're the grown-up now._ ) What if Rickon only breed girls? And, very often, what if Rickon decides to _leave_ , go north of the Wall, find himself a wildling bride? The Stark name would die – _Ned's name_ , Ned's name would die. This is all that's left of him, a name, she can't let it _die_.

Sansa hates this about herself. Her baby brother, so long thought lost – he is just Rickon, the last Stark male. He is not a _piece_ in the game,

except he is.

He is becoming a man before her eyes, and Sansa doesn't know what to do with it. His voice sometimes cracks in the middle of a sentence; his muscles are starting to show in his arms; he is getting taller, so much like Robb at his age that sometimes she misses a breath. Rickon is clever, his kindness is quiet and discrete but it is there. But most of all he is angry, always, waiting for a war that has ended, already; waiting for a real enemy to cast his fury upon, someone to blame for the childhood he never had. 

They have managed to head all this into fighting. And so Rickon trains and fights. Every day, for hours. Often with Podrick – patient, kind, wise Podrick, but sometimes with Arya.

The problem with Arya: she loves her little brother, and because of that she is ruthless with him.

One afternoon, Sansa is watching as they fight with wooden swords in the godswood, and when Rickon falls for the tenth time, she thinks, _now, he will give up_. He will scream, pull a tantrum. Arya's style is too different from Podrick's; it demands a calm, a coldness, even, that Rickon does not possess. His wilderness works on his own favor when he fights in Westerosi style, but not when it comes to Bravoosi water-dancers. Sansa has the impression Arya just really moved her feet twice.

Rickon doesn't yell, but doesn't get up, too, which Sansa has learned to read as a bad sign. "That was not fair," he accuses. "It's getting dark." 

Arya rolls her eyes. "You have a shitty memory." Sansa wants to correct her, _language, Arya_ , but she knows that it would be useless. "You are a sword, Rickon. Use your ears. They are just as important as your eyes."

"I'm using my–"

"You're not," Arya interrupts, the wooden sword dancing from one hand to another in such gracious, swift moves that it almost looks like it is, really, part of her. "You're only paying attention to your own body, not mine. Once you understand that the sword is you, and you are a sword, you will learn to focus on your enemy." She doesn't reach a hand to him, but rests the blunt point of the sword on the ground. "Now get up." When Rickon only stares at her with murderous eyes, she frowns one eyebrow. "Bran would never stay fallen this long."

" _Arya_ ," Sansa warns. _This is too much. He is just a child._ "That's enough."

Arya ignores her completely, but Rickon eventually gets up, and Sansa sees it, in his still childish face, hints of a man: the Stark finding its way through the fire in him as he raises his sword, widens his stance. "Again," he says, and Arya smiles to him.

He still looses. When the sunlight is too dim for Arya's standards, she lets him go. Sansa is leaning against a nearby tree, and approaches him, worried.

"Come here, Rick." He seems fine, although his gait is funny when he walks in her direction. She frowns. "Are you hurt?" She reaches a hand for his face. His lower lip is bleeding, she can see now that he is closer.

"I am well," he pulls off her hand. "You're not my mother, Sansa."

Sansa is not sure if he is saying that to her or to himself. Rickon is the only one who never said it out loud – _you are just like her, you look just like Catelyn_ – and yet, sometimes it is like he is screaming at the top of his lungs, watching her with the corner of his eye.

"I'm not." She keeps her hands clasped tightly in front of her, because the urge to caress his hair is almost impossible to resist. "You're my brother and my lord. Should I not care about you?"

"You don't need to take care of me all the time. I'm no child anymore."

_Of course you are. You are just ten._

"No, brother, you're not," she murmurs, and bites his tongue, so she won't order him to get inside. He leaves by himself. She observes quietly as he walks towards the castle, and only when his silhouette disappears into the almost-night she turns around, where Arya is waiting. "You shouldn't be so hard on him," she rebukes.

"You shouldn't be so soft," Arya answers. She has Needle in her hand, somehow; it was probably hidden somewhere. It is never too far away from Arya. The younger one searches for a stone, finds it; sits on the ground, between the roots of an oak.

"I'm not soft."

"You’re soft with everything that matters," she says, and starts to sharpen her sword, and Sansa knows what she means.

It is an amateur's mistake to show weakness, but really, she has no one else to talk about this. No matter their differences, Arya is her sister, more an ally than a friend. They are a pack; a team; the last Starks of Winterfell. There must be no secrets between them, not more than necessary, not when it comes about their most fundamental task: to rebuild their home, and protect Rickon at all costs. They'd agreed on that. Didn't they? "Well, aren't you afraid?"

"Of what?"

"That he will leave?"

"If he leaves," Arya says, in a placid voice that Sansa isn't completely used to yet, "then we pray that he will find happiness." The stone against the wiry blade makes a metallic noise, rings in Sansa's ears like a strident scream. It is getting really dark. In her man's clothes, with her hair cut like that, Sansa could play pretend and Arya could very well be Ned.

"If he leaves," Sansa replies, "everything we've worked for, it will be over."

But Arya only snorts; a bitter, tired sound. "Listen to yourself, Sansa. You are not paying attention to the important part."

"What is the important part?"

"The _he will find happiness_ part, sister," she sighs. "Just because you and I are doomed doesn't mean he has to be, too."

Sansa is so frustrated for a moment that she forgets the plots, the future, the possibility that in fact the Stark line might very well end with them. "And how beating him up will help with that?"

"Don't worry. Rickon just needs to do something with all that anger." She gets up, throws the stone aside, passes Sansa by. "You’re making a lord out of him, but I’m making a warrior. We need him to be both."

Sansa knows it is irrational, but the godswood is the only place she feels safe, apart from Tyrion's arms at night, because this is where Bran is watching them. For a moment, there are Arya's sleek steps getting lower and lower, the wind whistling through the leaves; Bran, somewhere; and Ned, always Ned between them, above them, by their side.

"Father was a great warrior, a great lord, and that didn't save him in the end," Sansa says, loud, so Arya will listen. _And Robb, too_ , but Sansa doesn't talk about Robb, never, the brother who never came, who never rescued her. She doesn't turn around to face her sister, but prays that she will understand, _this is not enough, being loved, being wise, or knowing how to swing a sword, it is never enough, we have to, we have to–_

"Aye, it didn't." Arya stops. Her voice doesn't quiver when she continues. "But before that, he raised sons and daughters to survive through the winter and we are here. I am here, alive, and Rickon is here, alive, and Jon is alive, and so are you." She takes a deep, a-thousand-years-old breath. "All men must die, Sansa. You're not paying attention again."

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


That night Tyrion notices there's something wrong, but he doesn't change the dance: he serves her a cup of tea, leaves her alone with her letters and her distracted eyes wandering as she stares at the snow falling outside. He says, "I'm retiring to bed," which now means something around _I'm here, if you need me_ , and she answers, "I'll be there in a moment," which is another way of saying _wait for me_.

And he does, obviously. Sansa doesn't need nightmares as an excuse anymore. She changes her clothes, blows out the remaining candles and crams herself in the blankets with him, holds his waist, pillowing his arm. He doesn't ask – he never asks – but doesn't fall asleep, too, slowly massaging her nape under her loose hair, until she is, if not relaxed, at least more inclined to sleep than before. 

"Do you ever feel," she says, after a long time, in a flat voice, "that the War meant nothing? That you risked your life over nothing, because in the end everyone will die anyway?"

Sansa is always the one to begin the conversation, if the conversation is to happen in a particular night. Tyrion just follows wherever she is heading. They don't talk about any of the wars, not normally, for blatant reasons.

"I see you are in a dark mood today," he mocks. And then catches a deep breath. "But, well, yes. Constantly."

"How do you deal with it?"

"I usually avoid this path, when it occurs me."

"But when you go there–"

"Then I drink until I pass out."

"But since I forbade you–"

He chuckles dryly. "Just tell me your point, my lady."

"I can't keep everyone alive," she declares, finally. "Or safe. I can't."

"You can't," he says, in his kind, soft voice, in his _night_ voice.

"Because I'm weak." Sansa is aware of how childish, how vulnerable she must sound. She is aware that showing herself like that is a terrible mistake.

"That is not true," he murmurs, gently. "You are stronger than the Wall."

She snorts. "Please."

"The Wall fell, but here you are, standing." She wants to cry, because he seems to actually believe his own words, but she doesn't want to cry in front of him again, even if he won't _see_ her. "You can't keep everyone alive or safe because no one can. But you accomplish admirable things, my lady."

"That's not enough."

"Nothing ever is." He runs a finger on the curve of her shoulder over her night gown, up and down. "Is there anything we can do... Now? Today?"

"No," she hides her face in his chest. She doesn't want to talk about Rickon and his bleeding lip, about how he will never win that war inside his heart, and probably she won't win her own battles, either.

"Then tomorrow we can try to fix it, whatever worries you," he says, as if it were simple like that. "One day at a time."

Sansa nods. She knows he never follows his own advice, but she is grateful for him, anyway, for his arms and his calm voice and the rhythm of his breathing lulling her to sleep.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


_It is winter_ , Sansa lies to herself. _Everyone needs to keep warm at night. There's nothing exceptional about holding your husband to sleep._

In the first nights Sansa didn't want to hold Tyrion. She wanted to hold – and, most of all, to be held by – someone. Anyone would do. In her half-conscious state it was easy to pretend he was Robb, or Ned, or, more often, Bran – he has the same height, and at night, she misses Bran the most. She always held him when he had nightmares with all those monsters Old Nan kept telling him stories about.

But Tyrion's body is at its loudest when there are no lights. Every night she is more and more aware of his skin, like he is a forgotten, dusty chamber in Winterfell she is putting back at use. She can’t see him, but she can feel, listen, touch: the muscles in his arms, bones forming his collarbone and shoulders, the hollow space under his jaw, his heart under her palm beating faster every time she comes closer even over the fabric of his tunic, his feet brushing against her knees. It is, in the end, just flesh: a little misshapen, yes, stunted and out of proportion; flesh, nevertheless. He smells of white lilies, old books, wine, fresh snow. One night after another she feels the ghosts of their first wedding night leaving, although she wouldn’t call this bed, now, a proper _marriage_ bed.

When the moon is full, it casts a wan, silver light on them; not enough to light up the room, but his eyes shine the brightest, even the black one, and it was in one of those nights that Sansa decided to speak. "My lord?" "Yes?" "What is your favorite food?" And then it started, short exchanges of unnecessary information – she has asked about the places he had been (he makes everything sounds like an adventure; she remembers the whipping marks on his back and wonders how much he is hiding for her sake), and in return, mumbled about her childhood, her girl friends. No dead family members, no wars, no lost lovers. It leaves little to conversation and so they don't talk much, but when he laughs she feels the rumble of it in his chest, his body vibrating slightly against hers. She likes how he sounds, then, careless, almost happy, or as happy as he can be. She starts to collect his laughter as he once did to her smiles. Sansa never thought about herself as a funny girl, but Tyrion laughs with her when she is not even trying. (He says he likes her mind, that she is a clever woman: "You have a sharp tongue, wife. Who knew?" He laughs at her, too, frequently. She lets him. She laughs with him at herself. She had never done it before.)

The darkness unravels secrets that the brightness leaves unscathed:

Like that night, when, as she turned around, he had whispered, worried, "you are shaking, what is wrong?" and she answered, "just hold me, I’m cold," and he ran the palm of his hand up and down her arm – his hand is not soft, it is roughed and there are little scars on his pads, but it serves her better than the blankets.

Or the names he calls her, sometimes. He still won’t call her by her name, but in their bed he doesn’t call her _my lady_ all the time. Rather, he says, fondly, bashfully: "this is not true, darling"; "why, my dear, you know me"; "try to get some rest, sweetheart, the dawn will arrive anytime now." (He had called her sweetling, once. "Don’t call me like that again," she’d said. He had never asked why.)

Or that occasion when he ran his fingers chastely up and down her waist as he talked about the first time he met Daenerys; his hand always stopping safely far from the sides of her breasts, but travelling lower enough to feel her curves, and when he hit the protuberance of her hipbone she had just _jerked_ towards him. "I'm sorry," she had murmured, ashamed, her breathing quickening. His thumb started to draw circles there, very softly, his voice like honey as he asked, "Here?" And she muttered some sort of agreement, closed her eyes. His voice was very careful when he spoke again: "May I? Only like this?" and she had just– "Yes, yes. Just like this is good." Every move of his fingers in the absurdly sensitive spot of her hip sent strange, weak waves of warmth through her spine, like the surface of a lake disturbed by a stone, and when she came closer, his lips found her brow. She fought the impulse to raise her head, cover his mouth with hers, and won. Fear raised in her chest; not of _him_ , but– "Tyrion," she'd called, like a warning. But he'd just whispered "Shhh. Please. Don't. Can you trust me?" and she'd nodded, relieved, yes, she could trust him. The conversation ended; they stood awake, listening to each other's breathing, for a long, long time. She didn't move, he didn't stop the soothing caress on her, but also did nothing else. He never repeated the gesture, and also never asked anything from her again. Her impulse never came back. She feels more sorry about it that she should.

Sometimes he is the one to weaken. When her nightmares are really bad she likes to wrap her arms around his neck; this way it feels like he is a shield over her, around her. It is a childish reaction, really, but he never complained. One of those times her hand had found the soft hair in the base of his head, curled it around one finger; he'd sighed a breath that sounded a lot like relief, after his initial tension. (He does it for her, often: runs his fingers through her hair to put her to sleep. It was only fair she returned the favor.) "Does this feel good?" she'd asked, and he'd nodded in response, soughing, "it does, my lady." It was an innocent, delicate touch, like their touches usually were; she'd never done anything of the sorts with anyone outside her kin. It was almost motherly, in a way. Maybe that was the whole point. "Should I stop?" she'd asked in a cautious voice, and he'd shook his head; maybe – just maybe – chortled nervously. "No, you shouldn't," and it was like he was melting right under her hands. Sansa felt powerful, remembering how he'd leaned into her touch when he was bathing. (Sometimes it seems like she is always trying to come back to that moment, to the discover and the wonder and the vulnerability she’d found there; to his scars.) _You are so easy to please,_ she’d thought, fingers running through his hair as he fell asleep, _just... so easy._

( _When you know what a man wants you know who he is, and how to move him_ , Petyr conspires in her head. She ignores him.)

Sometimes, his mouth brushes over her skin by accident – travelling the curve of her neck and the shell of her ear while he talks when her back is turned to him, chest firmly pressed against her; or soughs against her hair while he tells some unbelievable tale about Essos; but he never finds her lips. He won’t kiss her, like she is a whore. But she is not sure whores normally do what they are doing. It is getting easier and easier to read his body, like he is becoming some limb outside her, like she can reach him through spinal reflexes. Sansa is no maid: she knows sex, this it not sex, definitely, but it must be some kind of intimacy. She is also aware that desire and sex are different things, but their bed has neither; his touch is not a song, nor a fire. It's more like balm over her wounds; he heals her, somehow. She holds him because loneliness is still frightening; her own body seems lighter to carry around when she shares it, like a load is being taken away from her legs. She isn’t oblivious to the numerous occasions when she felt something hard pressing on her belly, or the small of her back. The twelve years old child-bride inside Sansa keeps saying this should scare her. For some reason it doesn’t. She survived far worst men than Tyrion Lannister. 

_Nothing happened_ , she tells herself in the morning– and it is true, but it also isn’t. _Something_ happened: she just doesn’t know what. It confuses her, the fact there is not a proper name for it. (Sansa believes it is important to properly name things. Places, events, feelings. People, above all.) He doesn’t seem bothered at all. In fact, life under the sun proceeds as if nothing has changed. At first she had been afraid of being misinterpreted, but Tyrion clearly expects absolutely nothing of her; he only takes whatever she is willing to give. Some nights, all she has to offer are vanishing memories; some nights, she merely intertwine her fingers in his, but keeps her distance and her silence; some nights she holds him so tight that he is forced to hold her, too, whispering sweet nothings in her ear, _don't, my lady, you are fine, it is fine, you are home now, it was just a bad dream_. But she can't remember the last time she slept, truly, _alone_. 

It makes her nervous– but she soon finds out they can’t just _stop_ , that once the night falls and the fire is out, it is inevitable to be drawn to him, even if most of the nights is just a palm over his heart and her brow resting on his shoulder; he is warmer at night, braver, funnier, far kinder. And after a three weeks or four, it became just one more habit, like braiding her hair in the morning, or inspecting if there's enough wood in the hearths.

 _In the dark_ , Tyrion had said to her, a lifetime ago, _I am the Knight of Flowers_ , but the weeks go by, and the moons, and there is no other face in her mind’s eye but his: scarred, familiar, missing a nose and all. In daylight, she doesn’t find him handsome, but she tries to remember why she had thought him repulsive and she can’t, not anymore. She's not even sure she can put the lines of his face together as a physical, material reality. All Sansa sees now when she looks at him is a feeling – of serene familiarity, as if he is another piece of her home, one of the thousand walls being raised around her for her protection.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


A week later or so, in the middle of the morning, Sansa realizes the Keep is too quiet. Rickon should be with Tyrion and Samwell, learning his lessons. They usually occupy her own solar, next to where she is now.

"Where is Rickon?" she asks Jeyne, and the girl gives her a sweet smile.

"I believe he is outside with lady Arya, my lady."

"And Lord Tyrion?"

"I don't know," she shrugs. Jeyne never cared about Tyrion; never hated him, never fell for his witty charms.

Sansa decides to walk around, then. She means to visit the glass gardens, where Gendry and another group of masons are relentlessly rebuilding and almost finishing the greenhouse, but she listens to echoes of laughter from afar and decides to follow the sound. She is surprised to find out a cheerful Arya, Rickon ducking down behind a abandoned carriage, forming a perfect ball of snow into his hands and then throwing it right in Tyrion's face. Her husband is the only one not smiling, and it was obvious why: his beard was white from the snow, just as most of his hair, and his clothes. He hits back, though; another snowball flies right in front of her and hits Rickon in his belly, in a moment of weakness.

Arya is the first to notice her presence. "Hey, sister," she screams, and takes a handful of snow from the ground, walking in her direction. "Your husband needs help. He is worse than you."

"Arya, don't—," she warns, raising both of her hands in a poor attempt to protect herself, but it is to no avail; her sister covers her up with merciless attacks, one, and then two, and three, and Sansa barely has the time to run for the closest tree and starts to make snowballs herself. She doesn't notice she is laughing until Rickon teams up with Arya against her; she also has no time to think about her ruined gown, or the fact they haven't played in the snow since they came back home.

"Stop hiding!" Rickon screams. She momentarily leaves her shelter to pelt him — Rickon is a hard target, being small and fast as he is, but her aim is right; she hits him in the arm.

"You were hiding when I arrived here," she yells back. "And two against one is not fair."

"Two against two," Arya corrects, and Sansa notices her husband is actually being attacked too, somewhere. She pities him, but just for a second, because Arya finds her, pulling her from behind the tree, bringing her to the open field. She throws Sansa on the ground, burying them in the snow, shoving snow into her cloak and her gown as the older writhes and squeals and laughs and fights back with all her might until she is pretty sure the fight is, at least, even, if not won.

They lie down on the snow, breathless and still smiling, looking at the white sky above them. "I need a hot bath," Sansa declares, her chest still rising and falling with the effort. "We all need a hot bath, actually," and now, her Lady Regent voice is finding its way into her, but not enough to ruin the fun.

"I feel fine," Rickon says, lying down by Arya's side. "We won."

"We did," Arya agrees.

"You didn't," Sansa shakes her head. "Maybe in the beginning, but I beat you in the end, sister."

"No way!," Arya retorts. "Tyrion is terrible, and we are in pairs. He lost for the two of you."

Sansa raises her head, and looks around. "Husband? Where are you?"

"I'm here." His steps are mute on the thick snow, but he eventually comes closer. His beard still has snowflakes all over, there's ice on his lashes, his cheeks are flushed red, his clothes are stained white. He looks down at them and a jet of fondness drowns his eyes. "I see you are very good at this," he says, looking at her.

"She isn't," Arya mutters. "You're just saying that because she is your wife."

"Well, I'm nothing but loyal," he shrugs, almost smiling, and crosses his arms before his chest. 

"Come here," Sansa calls. "Lie down with us." 

He frowns. "I've had enough of snow for today," he says, apologetically. "I had enough of snow for a lifetime, to be honest."

"You are very bad at this," Rickon shakes his head. "Have you never played in the snow before?"

Tyrion blinks once, and then twice. "Well... _No_. You know where I came from, I assume, my lord?"

Sansa bites her lip to prevent another laughter. He really looks funny, all covered in white like this. And defeated by a boy of ten. She can't think about a better way to destroy his Lannister pride than that. He ultimately lies down by Sansa's side, a couple of inches away. Touching is for night time.

"You look miserable," Sansa asserts, merrily.

"Thank you, wife."

"Hey, Rickon," Arya says, getting on her feet. "I bet you can't get to the Armory before— _hey_!," she yells, and runs after her brother, because in the middle of her sentence Rickon is already running.

Arya always had good timing, after all. They hear Rickon's laughter getting far and far away until it disappears.

"That one, right there," Tyrion censures, "is the Lord of Winterfell."

Sansa chuckles. "Let him play. He is just a child." He hums something that sounds like agreement, and turns his face to the side. She does the same, and watches as he studies every inch of her face with the same deliberate concentration he uses when he is working. Once, she thinks, distracted, being scrutinized like that would have been uncomfortable, but Sansa no longer fear his eyes. She is curious, though. "What?"

"How can you look so adorable after a _snow fight_?" he asks, frustrated, and Sansa blushes like she is ten and two again.

"I should have defended you against them," she says, changing the subject only because she doesn't know how to receive compliments anymore, at least not when they aren't a concealed threat. She can't defend herself, if there's no weapon. Being safe has its own challenges. "I'm sorry."

He smiles his customary crooked smile. "It is all right."

"Be honest with me."

"Always."

"Did you let them win?"

"I didn't. I swear. I'm that bad."

She giggles again. "You must have some southerner version of snowball fight?"

"Mud fight?" he tries, amused. "My lord father used to say it was a waste of time."

Sansa's voice is too skeptical; she doesn't try to hide it. "To _play_?"

"Yes." It's his time to scoff, a joyless sound. He doesn't talk much about Tywin, a fact that doesn't bother Sansa at all, but when he does it's always with a poisonous tone in his words, some cynic remark, an acid commentary. It's never like that, with these distant eyes, with this empty voice. She wants to drag it away, the emptiness. She wants the memory of Tywin to disappear, forever, for his sake as much as for hers.

"I think that for a novice in the art of snow-fighting, you went pretty well." She sits down, tilts her head to look down on him, reaches a hand to brush the snow from his eyebrows. He flinches away at first. "There you go," she murmurs, softly, getting up on her feet and offering him the same hand.

He looks at her warily before accepting her help, and just lets go of her hand when they are very close to the Keep, his fingers lingering on hers as much as they can. He hides his hands in his pockets, under his cloak, and once they are indoors, doesn't look back at her as they part their ways. 


	9. all my love was down in a frozen ground

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry about the _massive_ delay. College is all-consuming as always and elections are to take place in a couple of days so my country is kind of a mess ~~#elenão~~

  
  


>   
>  A man saw a bird and found him beautiful. The bird had a song inside him, and feathers. Sometimes the man felt like the bird and sometimes the man felt like a stone—solid, inevitable—but mostly he felt like a bird, or that there was a bird inside him, or that something inside him was like a bird fluttering. This went on for a long time.
> 
> "The language of the birds," Richard Siken

  
  
  
  


When winter touched the South, the northerner breezes in King's Landing made the cold unbearable, specially at night, and Tyrion hid indoors, the chill berthing in his bones making the pain in his hips and legs impossibly worse. Jon mocked him for it, and Tyrion commented about how he would never, ever, understand the northerner obsession with winter as some magical, mystical entity. He just felt miserable. There was nothing special about _snow_.

And Jon gave him one of those smiles of his — kind of sad, a thousand years old, as if he had to carry the world on his no-more-bastard shoulders. (Later, he will see the same smile on Sansa's face, and will wonder what is _wrong_ with Ned's children.)

"You don't understand the cold," he had said, like some fucking old, wise wizard, a flagon of ale in his hands. Tyrion glanced at him over his cup of wine in disbelief.

"I do, Jon. I _do_ understand the cold. It is about endless pain and the utter impossibility of anything that vaguely resembles comfort."

"You southerners think you know comfort," Jon had said, drinking hard and looking at the courtyard through the balcony of his royal chambers, despite his refuse in accepting them. _I am a man of the Night's Watch. It doesn't matter if my father is a Targaryen._ Tyrion only thought the boy knew how to hide his feelings, very much like his lady wife once more. "But if you spend all your life surrounded by the sun and the heat, how will you know how much it is worth? How _precious_ these things are?"

"Oh," Tyrion smiled, and glared at him, still all in black from head to toes. Jon was no stupid man; his message was very clear. _The Wall needs help_ , he kept saying. "Is it about that _you don't know what you have until it's gone_ thing?"

"Yes. On a daily basis. At the end of every damn day, we come back home and we know warmth again, in front of our fireplaces, together. This is how we survive through winter, my lord. Not fighting for ourselves. We fight for home."

He remembered Essos, then, and almost said it, _I know warmth; maybe I don't know home, but I know warmth._ Of course all those concepts — family, a warm place around a table, somewhere to come back to, like an anchor — felt very foreign to Tyrion, who had no roots whatsoever, and whose biggest desire as a child had always been to _leave_ : to know the world, to flee from the Rock and Tywin and Cersei. Maybe Jon was right; maybe he would never know comfort, if a _home_ was needed to know it.

"I thought you northerners were sturdier than that," he mocked, instead. "This sounds like bad poetry."

Jon smiled, then, with all the pride worthy of a boy raised by Ned Stark and all the obscenity of someone who grew up as a bastard and spent his formative years in Castle Black. "Fuck off, Imp."

When Sansa called him, a couple of years later, Jon's words were there, whispering empty promises. _Say yes to her. Go, find yourself a home_.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


(A man had two birds in his head—not in his throat, not in his chest—  
and the birds would sing all day never stopping.  
The man thought to himself, _One of these birds is not my bird._  
The birds agreed.)

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


This is the story, _his_ story: he was married, once; he was in love, once.

This is where his heart is at, every day since, and Tyrion knows it won’t ever leave.

After that, he ordered death and made death with his own bare hands; he fell in love again and again and again; he felt angry and wanted to burn everything to ashes; he traveled the world and was alone; he held power, and then lost it, and then took it back; he lost his pride, his dignity, his name, his family; but he is always there, never leaving the shadow of that girl.

He never found her. Maybe that was for the better – what would he say to her, if he had, anyway. But he never found her, and that, he thinks, is the whole point of leaving: to come back home with empty hands, and, somehow – _somehow_ , move on. Because he is not sure that finding her was what he really wanted; looking back now, maybe he just needed something to chase, a unreachable horizon to keep him going.

(Now, he can only feel his limbs as an appendix, inconvenient, vexing. Sometimes he puts the palm of his hand over the left side of his thorax just to check his heartbeat. _I am alive_ , he thinks: it's a tiresome idea.)

His marriage with Tysha – he was so drunk in love, in such a hurry to be hers. _I never gave her a cloak_ , he thinks. _A Lannister cloak, my protection over her. I never did it._

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


(A man saw a bird and wanted to paint it.  
The problem, if there was one, was simply a problem with the question.  
Why paint a bird? Why do anything at all?  
Not how, because hows are easy—  
series or sequence, one foot after the other—  
but existentially why bother, what does it solve?)

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


He often imagines Sansa with dark eyes, dark hair.

He knows he cares about her when the image starts to feel like an atrocity.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


( _Blackbird_ , he says. So be it, indexed and normative.  
But it isn’t a bird, (...)  
he isn’t looking at a bird, real bird, as he paints,  
he is looking at his heart, which is impossible.

Unless his heart is a metaphor for his heart,  
as everything is a metaphor for itself,  
so that looking at the paint is like looking at a bird that isn’t there,  
with a song in its throat that you don’t want to hear  
but you paint anyway.)

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


Tyrion will remember this night, a moonless, particularly dark night. He is aware of her only by the sound of her voice, the pressure of her chest against his chest. He has a hand on her, somewhere. Probably her shoulder, where it normally lands.

They've been talking about the first time she saw Robb drunk — she is introducing her lost family little by little every night, the good, happy memories — when her hand slides from where it was resting on his shoulder up to his neck, and somehow — he won't remember, really, how — she cups his cheek.

He flinches away, and she stops talking. "Let me—," she says, but never finishes. It's a thing she does a lot, like she is always trying to find the right words, frustrated at herself. In the dark, some words are not as neat and simple as they are during the day. He hears it, curiosity and shame and even fear, and something else, consuming it all. "Stay still."

In the morning he also won't be able to remember why he lets her.

She begins from his cheeks, running her hand through his cheekbone, and then his eyebrows. He closes his eyes and she touches his shut lids, but he doesn't open them again when she moves on. She delineates the scar where his nose used to be ("Does it hurt?" she whispers, so pure and sweet that he can't find it in him to be angry with her. "Not really"). When her fingers reach his lips he startles again, but she waits, and proceeds when his breathing comes back to normal: runs her thumb over his upper lip, feels the scar tearing it in two, and then the lower lip, and then his chin, and slips up the line of his jaw, until his ear, and his brow, and stops at his hair.

"What are you doing?" he asks. His voice is hoarse from the lump in his throat.

"What do you think I'm doing?" she answers. There is an audibly smile there. "I'm seeing you."

This, he will remember:

He wants to kiss her, more than ever before (and he always, _always_ wants to kiss her), because he almost says it, _thank you_ , and he wants to say it, _don't do that_ , and _I will miss you, when I'm gone_.

He is on the verge of asking: _kiss me. Please_.

"I suppose I look much better in the dark," he japes, instead.

"You look the same to me," she says, as if it were a good thing. 

And Tyrion — Tyrion is just too old, and he has seen too much of the world, to let himself believe he is anything more than a deformed monster; but, as it seems, not even monsters are out of the reach of kindness.

He takes her hand from his hair and brings her palm to his mouth, kisses it as softly as she had touched him; neither of them speak, afterwards.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


(The hand is a voice that can sing what the voice will not,  
and the hand wants to do something useful.  
_Sometimes, at night, in bed, before I fall asleep,_  
_I think about a poem I might write, someday, about my heart,_ says the heart.)

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


Tyrion spends his name-day in the glass gardens, as he spends most of his days, lately (they concentrated all their work-force on it and finished the greenhouse before any other site of Winterfell). He doesn't know a thing about gardening, but it is the warmest place he could find, and the heat alleviates the constant pain in his bones. Osha is teaching him how to properly cultivate flowers, how to heal the plants from pests with oils, how to avoid some insects and birds, what to add in the clay so the fruits will grow faster. No flower has grown yet, but one day, he realizes he is hoping for it.

"Gardening is the art of patience," Osha says, sometimes.

He usually spends his name-day drunk, trying not to think about Joanna and failing. No one knows about it but Podrick, who gives him a book about old dragons of Asshai and other monsters. But Sansa stops by in the middle of the morning, apparently just to see him. When the day is done and she holds him to sleep like every normal night, he thinks about it as a gift.

There's this odd dynamic— it's not that she is turning him into a better person; he feels the same selfish, bitter man he has always been, but they've adjusted to each other in such a way that she is the one with answers at the tip of her tongue and he is the one often speechless, marveled by her. She is the fearless one, seeking for comfort when she wants it, shamelessly crawling her way into his arms in the dark, and he is the one holding on when his fingers are _burning_ to touch her skin past the limits of her clothes, not out of nobility but out of fear: of her rejection, her surprise or, worse, her impossible consent. ( _Never_ , she'd said. _Never_.) Once, he was the one who could never stop talking, but now she asks harmless questions so naturally that he is starting to believe she _wants_ to know those things, more than just to fill the years of silence between them. His wife _is_ , for some unfathomable reason, interested in his favorite books and his favorite color and the most beautiful building he had ever seen and which flowers he thinks are best for tea and which are best for ornaments.

("What should I grow for you?" he asks that night.

She takes her time to think, fingers absently drawing abstract patterns on his chest over his tunic. "Almond blossoms. Apricot blossoms." A couple of silent seconds. "Wild daisies. Asters."

"Why?"

She accommodates herself closer in his arms. "They are pretty. And they convey good things."

"What things?"

She doesn't answer.)

A couple of weeks later they cross their ways in the middle of the afternoon when he and Arya are heading to her solar, upstairs, and Sansa sees him, smiles, slows down her pace. He mirrors her without even thinking.

"I was looking for you," she says, takes a little, glass bottle from somewhere under her cloak, and gives it to him. "I've visited Winter Town this morning."

It's full of dry petals that must have been red, once. He opens it, smells it. "What is that for?"

"It's for the pain in your legs," she explains, resting one gloved hand on his left shoulder, and he looks up to look her in the eye. "You just have to blend it with peppermint oil. Jeyne can do it for you. Or Osha."

"Oh." He is absolutely sure he had never mentioned or complained about the pain in his legs for her, or around her, and suddenly he doesn't know how to phrase his gratitude. She is the only person he knows that has this effect on him and Tyrion hates it. "Well—that was very... That was most kind of you. Thank you, my lady."

She excuses herself to leave, and just then he realizes how close they've orientated each other in that brief exchange — how she was bending her neck down even if no secret was being shared, and he had unconsciously leaned his body to the left, to where her hand had been, how she runs her fingers down his arms as she leaves, and when she disappears in the corner, Arya is looking at him suspiciously.

"Don't," he mutters.

"I didn't say anything," she retorts.

Sometimes, he wishes he had just someone to compare her to. But Sansa insists on being unpaired. She is not in love with him like Tysha had been, she is not sweet lies and bitter truths like Shae, she is not devoted to him like Penny, she doesn't need him, doesn't love him, but keeps him all the same.

He never had someone like her in his whole life.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


(What is alive and what isn’t and what should we do about it?  
Theories: about the nature of the thing. And of the soul. Because people die.  
The fear: that nothing survives. The greater fear: that something does.

The night sky is vast and wide.

They huddled closer, shoulder to shoulder, painted themselves in herds,  
all together and apart from the rest. They looked at the sky, and at the mud,  
and at their hands in the mud, and their dead friends in the mud.  
This went on for a long time.)

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


He says to himself he is not waiting for Sansa every night, he is just reading – and the book Podrick gave him is really a very entertaining book, but his chest is flooded with relief when he hears the door opening and then closing behind him. He doesn't look back, but suddenly his eyes can't understand the words before him. He listens to her steps coming closer and she all but falls in the chair next to his with a exhausted sigh. Her eyes are fixed on the flames but he is not sure she is _seeing_ it.

He gets up and walks to the nightstand between them, where Jeyne had left a full teapot earlier. "No," she mutters, closing her eyes and pressing her thumb firmly against the middle point between her eyebrows. "Give me wine." Tyrion looks at her uncannily – smiling, almost, but serves a cup of wine from what he is drinking, hands it to her in silence. "What?" she says, frustrated, as she accepts it. "Can't a woman have wine peacefully anymore?"

"A woman can do whatever she wants under her own roof," he raises his hands apologetically. Her lips twist in a repressed smile, and she takes a small sip.

It is hard to concentrate in his book when she has that void in her eyes. She doesn't divert her attention from the fire. Maybe it is one of those nights when she wants to be left alone. She shakes her head, as if to dismiss a intrusive thought, and takes another swig. "This is really good," she says, looking at the content of her cup. He can't avoid a wicked smile.

"It is also very strong," he says. "You might want to drink it slower."

"Is it Dornish?"

"Myrish."

"Of course." Her lips brush the rim of her cup, and she tries to peek at the cover of his book, her head drooping to the side. "What are you reading?"

"Something from Asshai." 

She finishes her wine and puts the cup aside; leans down, settling in the chair, shuts her eyes again, and exhales a long breath. Her shoulders drop in tiredness. "Read out loud for me."

"It isn't a good bedtime story," he explains.

"I don't mind." Her hair is still braided, but messy, a single plait rested over her left shoulder. It catches the fire, golden highlights to her naturally red strands. Maybe it's a good thing she's not dark-haired, after all. At least like that, there's a hint of Lannister in her head. "I like your voice. You have a very manly voice."

He frowns. "Are you drunk?"

"I'm not drunk." She opens her eyes, points to his book. "What is it about?"

"Monsters," he answers with a dark smirk.

"My brother Bran adored these stories," she says, fondly, and her eyes wander again.

Oh. "Is he your favorite?" he asks, careful but curious. Every mention of Bran on her lips sounds like a song, a prayer.

She chortles feebly. "Bran was everyone's favorite." _Was_. He doesn't know if she prefers to phrase it like that because the people who are supposed to love him are gone, or because _he_ is gone – not dead, but gone, which, Tyrion assumes, is terrible in its own particular way.

"He is very brave," he says, honestly. "We could never have won without him."

"I wish you could have met him before..." She trails off, and then just sighs, looks up to the ceiling. "Before."

"Oh, but I have," he answers, although he can't remember Bran as a child anymore; he had seen him just once before the War. Now, when he thinks about Bran Stark, he thinks about a god. There is no other way to describe him, and no difference for Tyrion.

Sansa frowns one eyebrow. "When?"

He shifts in his chair, feeling suddenly uncomfortable. "I was coming back from the Wall, when Jon first joined the Night’s Watch. He asked me to help Bran, after he’d fell, so I stopped by Winterfell on my way South."

She nods, just once, and says nothing else. He comes back to his book.

Her voice is small and distant when she speaks again. "Did you?"

The silence had settled between them for so long that he misses the point of her question, at first. "Did I what?"

"Did you help him?"

"Oh, it was a silly thing," he dismisses. "I draw a special saddle for him to ride horses," he shrugs. It _sounds_ silly, now that Bran had practically saved the world and all without even moving. "I don't know if he had the chance to try, back then."

"This isn't silly," she says, and her voice shakes so much that for a moment he believes she will cry. She doesn't. "He wanted to be a knight."

He smiles with what's left of his kindness. "Well. He is more than a knight, now."

"You never told me that," Sansa says, gently, as far as accusations can be gentle.

He merely shrugs, and they stare at each other for a long, long time.

She looks very tired. 

"My lady–" he begins, but she interrupts before he can think about a way to finish.

"Read for me, husband," she asks, her eyes thawing.

He complies. (Tyrion never learned to say _no_ to Sansa.) He reads about gargoyles and ghosts, and monsters with four heads, with his gentlest, tenderest voice, until he looks up quickly to spy her face and she is asleep, soundly and peaceful, in her chair. Her head is dropped to the side, her chin resting against her right shoulder. It doesn't look comfortable – no more than her dress, too tight around her waist. He gets up and walks around the bedroom blowing all the candles out except for one taper by his side of the bed, changes his clothes and comes back to the fireplace.

Were he a whole, real husband, not a half-man, he would carry her to bed, but he isn't. He approaches the chair silently and takes her hands from where they are folded in her lap. "My lady?" he whispers. She doesn't even blink. He sighs, touches her cheek delicately. _So beautiful_ , he thinks, almost sad. "Wake up. Come to bed."

She shifts slightly to the side and curls herself as if she were trying to hold something that isn't there. Her eyes remain closed, and he starts to think it was a bad idea to give her wine. "No," she mutters.

A involuntary smile shapes his lips. He kneels down, take her boots off. "Sansa, come on. Your neck will be sore."

"I'm good," she mumbles; the sound of the air coming in and out of her lungs when she sleeps is almost music to him, now, one that he actually likes. He takes one step closer, takes her hand again and tugs at it this time until she relents with a irritated grunt. But she lets him guide her by the wrist, carefully deviating from the furniture on their way until they get to the bed. Her knees brush against the edge of the mattress and she lets herself fall on it. He climbs into the bed by her side, gently wraps one arm around her waist to pull her up until her head rests comfortably on the pillows. He doesn't think about how easily she leans on him in her almost-asleep state.

He is ready to blow the last candle out when she speaks, the letters all messed up and confused around her tongue, "Husband."

"Yes?"

She tries to reach the laces on her back, but her arms are weak. "Take this off," with half-open, hazy eyes staring at his wary, mismatched ones. "I'm wearing another under this one."

He had _guessed_. That is not the point. She is lying down on her belly and he just nods, takes in a deep breath, and starts to free her from all the laces of her gown (a beautiful gown, deep gray with white ribbons tying around her torso). He does it slowly, trying to steady his hands as the fabric loosens around her; "may I?" he murmurs, and she barely nods her consent. He slides the straps off from her shoulders, pulling her arms gently. There is, indeed, a chemise under the first shift that looks a lot like the ones she uses to sleep. When the dress is huddled around her waist, he touches her hips with all the care he can muster: "Raise it up for me, darling." She obeys without questioning and he feels something warm, but not in his groin, as he was expecting. It is rather around his heart. (He had fantasized about this very moment a dozen of times – undressing his wife, her face against her pillows, lying on her belly and her hips raised for him. But not like that. Not like that at all.) He keeps his hands safely on the sides of her body as he slips the gown down her legs until it is completely off, and just leaves it there, on the bed at her feet, too tired to fold it or stow it, and just then he blows the taper out and finds his place by her side. 

The following is a reflex borne of habit: one arm wrapping her shoulder to bring her close and her arm surrounding his waist and the curve of her body against his and _warmth_ , so much warmth, more than he ever thought possible this far north.

A better man wouldn't use his wife's body to keep the chill out of his skin. A wiser man wouldn't try to read it, understand it, wouldn't feed useless expectations. But she sighs a deliciously exhausted, relieved breath when she is comfortable inside his arms. A braver man would do the right thing and turn his back, and just fucking _sleep_ , or maybe just kiss the girl already.

(He is made of ugly scars and fatigued muscles and cold bones. His body is a deadly weapon that he turns against everyone else or himself: he feels it as a liquid or a vapor, something vague and sparse occupying his empty places, giving the tones of his words or the scorn of his laughter. It occasionally solidifies, under the right conditions, and changes into a gun. But Sansa is here, and he doesn't want to hurt Sansa. He thinks he wouldn't be capable even if he wanted. 

But a nobler man would warn her about the danger one more time.)

She is always cold. And thin, so thin. He feels her bones protruding under her pale, marble skin, even with the layer of her clothes in his way: ribs and hipbone and the sharp angles of her shoulders, shoulder-blades, the notches of her spine. He ran a finger over them, once, in one of his braver moods, almost down to the small of her back, and felt her shivering lightly under the touch. _Made of steel_ , he had thought, then. Today, he rests one modest hand on her shoulder. She's not drunk, he knows she's not, but he won't risk her resentment in the morning.

Still, even with the privilege that is to know her bones, he wishes he had a whole harvest for her.

This whole marriage is winterbound. He wouldn't call it love.

"Thank you," she mumbles, eyes closed and face hidden on his chest. "You're a good husband."

He reaches for the tip of the nearest blanket to cover her and bows his head down to puts his lips to her forehead. "You're drunk," he answers, and she chuckles briefly, too tired to argue. 

The minutes before sleep catches him and the first minutes right after he wakes up are always the hardest, his conscience fighting its best against the unconsciousness, like the last battle against the drowning in a dark lake. There's too much lucidity in him; he can't deny how much he craves it, not even _her_ , but this. He tries, very attentively, not to put a name on it as they fall asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title from "re: stacks" by bon iver + poem is "the language of the birds" by richard siken  
> (for those who are curious,  
> Almond blossoms = Hope. Contemplation  
> Apricot blossoms = Diffident love  
> Wild daisies = I will think of it  
> Asters = Love. Contentment. Patience)


	10. [the dead] will be the bird / knocking, knocking against glass

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know how to define Petyr/Sansa relationship, but **TW** : be ready for a lot of senseless guilt and daddy/identity issues
> 
> I'm looking at this draft for ages, because this theme kind of hits home. And I'm not content with it, but I also think it's not going anywhere else, so, let's just go through it together, ok? Ok.  
> (Also spoilers for the books)

>   
>  When the dead return  
>  they will come to you in dream  
>  and in waking, will be the bird  
>  knocking, knocking against glass, seeking  
>  a way in, will masquerade  
>  as the wind, its voice made audible  
>  by the tongues of leaves, greedily  
>  lapping, as the waves’ self-made fugue  
>  is a turning and returning, the dead  
>  will not then nor ever again  
>  desert you, their unrest  
>  will be the coat cloaking you,  
>  the farther you journey  
>  from them the more  
>  that distance will maw in you,  
>  time and place gulching  
>  when the dead return to demand  
>  accounting, wanting  
>  and wanting and wanting  
>  everything you have to give and nothing  
>  will quench or unhunger them  
>  as they take all you make as offering.
> 
> Then tell you to begin again.
> 
> "No Ruined Stone," by Shara McCallum

 

 

 

It happens some days. Sansa hasn't discovered the triggers yet. One morning she will wake up and look at the mirror: there, she will find a beautiful woman, pale as snow, with blue eyes like the summer skies, auburn hair as fall leaves, high cheekbones with sharp edges that could cut and kill. _Who are you?_ (She will recognize something, a memory long lost. _Mother?_ ) And then she will search for dark hair, for snake eyes, for a wan, sick skin. 

Alayne had a father, and a story, and a home, and a name: a future. Sansa says to herself she shouldn't feel guilty for slipping into her skin so easily. (She does).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 _You are Ned's daughter, after all._ That was what he told her. And stared at her as if it were the greatest honor, to die by the work of her hands. She is looking at him and it is snowing; but when she swings the blade and opens his throat in one neat, swift move, it is Ned's head parting from his body and falling at her feet. She is holding Ice, and realizes her tongue had been cut out from her mouth.

And then she wakes up screaming.

There's a gray light filling the room and she knows, in the back of her mind, the sunrise is coming. She looks at her own shaky hands and they are clean. She puts one finger inside her own mouth and her tongue is there. She understands, too late, that her face is wet because of the tears, and not spilled blood.

Her husband wakes up, touches her shoulder, and she starts, trying to contain a sob.

"Wife," he mutters, worried, half-awake. She had untangled her body from his arms in her hectic sleep, and now she can't move – away from him or closer to his embrace, she can't move, she _can't move_. "My lady, take a deep breath. You are awake now."

He places one hand on her shoulder and she closes her eyes and tries to obey. It is ridiculously hard, the dawn is cold, her lips are trembling and so is the air when it rushes in; but his voice is soothing and real, his hand is warm, and she focus on the air coming in, filling her lungs until it pains her. "Now breathe out, slowly." She lets the air escape between her half-parted lips. Slowly, as he instructed. "Good. One more time, come on, a deep breath."

She repeats the cycle again, and again, and again, until her hands are not shaking so much. Neither of them fall asleep after that, but he is the first to rise. He puts his lips to her forehead and does not ask a thing.

It's only when the sun is high in the sky that she remembers: it is the anniversary of Petyr's death.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sansa was six when she saw a doll, very ugly and worn, that belonged to one of the cook's daughters, and decided she wanted it.

Her lord father could give her any doll she wished for; Sansa knew this.

Thieves are terrible sinners; and it is even worse when you steal from the poor. She also knew this; her Septa taught her, and she was always the one to remember her lessons. (She was a _good girl_ , everyone said. _You're a good girl, Sansa. You're a true lady._ )

During six or seven moons, it became an habit, of sorts. She never kept any of those toys for more than a week, hidden under her pillow: jewels made of northerner stones, nothing precious like emerald or ruby or diamonds, but black tourmaline, unakite, little agates; hair-ribbons; more dolls. She watched from a distance when the children of the household found them again with a happy shout: under a tree, behind a chair, casually placed on the kitchen's table. She told herself that such joy, of finding something you thought lost, was even better than the toy itself. Such reasoning made her feel proud of her acts.

"What is this, sweetling?" her lady mother had asked one night, sitting by her side on her bed, touching the bracelet of wooden beads around her ankle.

"Robb gave it to me," she answered. Catelyn frowned, but nodded, asking nothing more. Perfect Sansa was always beyond suspicion.

(Thinking about it retrospectively, Sansa wonders if it's fair to blame Petyr for _everything_.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The most terrifying thought that has ever crossed her mind is,

_but what if I'm no one's daughter_

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The day stretches, dull and silent. It is not the acute hack of a keen blade; it feels like the tender empty space when you loose your teeth, throbbing and sensitive – and yet you can't help but try to fill it with your tongue. There's a _hole_ there, and the hole is worst than the pain.

She does her duties. People call her _my lady,_ or _m'lady_ , or _lady Stark_. "My lady, your letters arrived, I've placed them on the table in your solar," "Lady Stark, we are in need of more candles and wax," "m'lady, the cook's sister has the flu," and Sansa nods, barely listening, picks up her letters. Reads them. Assists the cook's sister (her name is Anya). Does the laundry. (Tyrion doesn't like it. "You are a lady," he mutters. "You shouldn't be washing clothes." She doesn't adore it, but doesn't care, either. Alayne did the laundry all the time.)

There's a part of Sansa that was supposed to belong to Ned and only Ned. But now it shares ground with another man that she could never bring herself to hate, not even after all the truths and lies, not even in the end. He taught her how to kill, to seduce, to play. This is not the worst part.

The worst part is allowing herself to miss him. This part, she had to learn alone.

Cersei was right. She is a traitor, in the end; she won’t ever forgive herself for that, and the people who could forgive her are all dead.

Brienne notices her melancholy but does not ask, keeping her company instead. (It helps; Brienne always helps.) Tyrion looks at her gingerly once or twice during the day, and appears in her solar in the middle of the afternoon, a tray with bread and cheese in hand. He puts it on her table, makes his leave, and then stops, comes back one step. "You look tired, my lady. Are you feeling sick?"

How could she explain _that_ to him? She had seen both of her fathers die. There must be something dreadfully wrong with her. "A little bit, my lord, but I'm sure it will pass soon."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

She retires sooner than usual, takes a long bath and goes to bed, hiding under the sheets.

(She wishes she could just cry already. The lump in her throat is getting suffocatingly bigger.)

When Tyrion comes in, the candles are burning low and she is still awake. She knows, by the pattern of the noises coming from the courtyard and the hallways, that is still relatively soon for Winterfell's standards. She watches him closing the door, removing his gloves, his cloak, his boots, and then walking distractedly to the table in the other corner of the room. She shifts on the bed and only then he notices her.

"Oh. You're awake." He doesn't smile, but the surprise in his voice sounds warm. He comes closer, standing by her side, looking down at her with a bow of his head. Whatever he sees in her makes his face twist in worry. "Are you feeling better?"

She nods, because she doesn't want to explain any of it. She doesn't want to talk about all the stolen toys under her bed; about the taste of mint at the tip of her tongue. So, "Yes, my lord."

Her little husband studies her face. "You look pale."

"I'm always pale," she reminds him.

"Not like this. Have you eaten?"

"I'm not hungry."

He pulls a face, narrows his eyes in reprimand. "Let me bring you something."

"No." She holds him when he tries to leave. Her voice sounds feeble. "Don't go," she asks, feeling the weakest of the Starks. Arya would never feel such things, let alone say them out loud.

He glances at her fingers around his wrist, then at her face, and nods. She makes room for him, so he can sit on the mattress by her side. It is a natural reaction, to nestle in his arms, face turned to his chest as he holds her close. His body went from a threat (like a sword against her throat) to a domestic, familiar thing (like an old porcelain in her family for generations) to a comfort. Like a blanket. 

"Tell me what's wrong, my lady," he says, gently. His thumb is making circles over the curve of her shoulder.

 _I'm afraid of my own mind, for I forgot my name today_ doesn't sound reasonable, even if it is true. _I wish I didn't miss Petyr Baelish_ sounds just– wrong, very wrong.

"You never call me by my name," she states, instead, and looks up to face him. He shifts his arms so she rests her head in the crook of his elbow, like a babe. 

One second, two, three, and he understands. "Oh. I'm sorry? I thought you would prefer it that way."

"I don't. Not when we are alone."

"I see," he says. "Sansa is a beautiful name. You are right. There is no reason to avoid it."

Her eyes go shut, then, while she inhales deeply and lets the name find a place in her heart. _Sansa._ Sansa likes the way he pronounces it (slow, but natural, like she is part of his personal landscape); it feels steady, safe. Tyrion's voice is deep, rich, good for telling stories; it reminds her of Ned and it breaks her heart a little, but it's a sweet pain, a welcomed pain. The silence lingers on for a while.

"Hugor Hill," he murmurs, quietly. She opens her eyes, frowning one eyebrow. "I hid under this name. In Essos."

The words are caught in her throat. Sansa suddenly feels for him something still nameless that spreads inside her body like a _fluid_ , a real substance, filling up spaces, warming her bones; whatever it is, immediately makes tears sting in her eyes, and she wonders if he lost himself in Hugor Hill, or if he always knew who he was. 

"After the King?"

"Oh. You know that story?" he asks, surprised, and smiles kindly at her. "Of course you do."

She knows. Hugor from the Hills, first King of the Andals by the hands of the Father himself. The Maid had given him a wife with blue eyes, too. "My lady mother kept the Seven." 

He nods, and his free hand hesitantly reaches out to touch her hair. "You don't need to be strong _here_ , Sansa," he says, so very gently, and that's when Sansa realizes they are a place – somewhere she goes _to_ or runs _from_. "You have been through a lot, and you have so many people relying on you, but not me."

"Don't you rely on me?" she tries to jape. It works. He rolls his eyes, but smiles. "I must keep you alive too. I'm your wife. This is my job." 

"What I'm trying to say is that in case you need someone to be weak with... I'm your husband. This is _my_ job."

Oh. It's affection. The nameless feeling is _affection_.

"What happened in Essos?" she asks in a murmur. Apparently, he is not confused by the sudden change of subject; he merely takes in a deep breath, doesn't take his hand from her hair, lift his eyes to think.

"A lot of things happened in Essos." His eyes find hers again, and he strokes her cheekbone. "I've told you some."

"You only tell me the good parts," she mutters, and the next words blurt out before she can stop them. "Your back." She swallows hard, trying not to divert her gaze from his. He deserves this, at least; if she is making honest questions, she needs to look into his eyes. It wouldn't be fair, otherwise. "You have scars."

Nothing but the tight set of his jaw denounces his tension as he studies her whole face before he speaks, softly, "I do. But I think you already know what they mean."

She suspects, but such things are forbidden in Westeros. Her own father fought against it, punishing the men who got involved in such atrocities, and Daenerys is the Breaker of Chains, after all. "I don't."

"Then ask me."

"You were sold as a slave." The words sound unbelievable, distant, as if she is listening to someone else speak them.

"I was."

"And they hurt you."

"They did." He smirks sardonically and his words have all the usual rough edges of his ironic moods. "It was... unpleasant."

She remembers the weight of all the marriage cloaks on her back, and the flat of the swords of the Kingsguard against her calfs. It's not the same, but– "I'm so sorry," she mumbles, her fingers gliding on his collarbones over his tunic.

"I am sorry too," he shrugs, as if it were nothing. "What happened in the Eyrie?" And just like that, she stiffens inside his arms like a bowstring. He feels it immediately, and his face is careful, hesitant, when he asks, "maybe not?"

 _Not today_ , she thinks, _please. Not today._

"I hid as a bastard." Her voice is hard and flat, but she tries to relax. The hand stroking his shoulders falls still on his chest. "I thought you knew."

"I do," he nods, brushing his knuckles on the sides of her face. "I do know."

She makes the mistake of looking into his eyes again. They are close enough so she can see details, even in dim light: the green has little golden lines around his pupil, like rays of sunshine, and it overflows worry, wariness.

The black, though. The black is just pure kindness. It dismantles her completely.

"Alayne Stone," she says, toneless. "Alayne... was the name of Petyr's mother." 

It almost sounds like a statement right from a history book. Something distant and impersonal that happened ages ago. But her voice cracks like a frozen lake, thin under heavy steps, in the last second. And that's it; she realizes she can't speak, the words dying in her mouth like a sickness consuming her energy. She is tired. Alayne should be dead already.

But it is easier than she thought it would be, just _speak_ the damn name; she knows worse pains. With cautious moves, Tyrion comes closer and puts his lips to her forehead. "Your name is Sansa," he whispers against her skin, removing the hair from her face and tucking it behind her ear – she closes her eyes again – then his lips move to her temple, "Sansa," and then to her cheek, under her eye, "Sansa," and over her closed lids, "Sansa." 

And something between them ignites and comes alive, something dormant, waiting to be resurrected. She doesn't notice that her fingers are clutching his shirt like a shipwrecked man clings to the ruins of his boat; doesn't feel the tears she had been holding the whole day until a sob forces itself out of her chest, but Tyrion just kisses them away, and holds her, and hums so low she can barely hear him – just the sibilants reach her ears, _Sansa, Sansa, Sansa_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you are all just awesome. Let's talk. :D


	11. you can keep all that you steal, 'cause I want you, now; nothing more than that

  
  
  
  


> In the middle of my life  
>  it was right to say my desires  
>  but they went away. I couldn’t even make them out,  
>  not even as dots  
>  now in the distance.
> 
> Yet I see the small lights  
>  of winter campfires in the hills—  
>  teenagers in love often go there  
>  for their first nights—and each yellow-white glow  
>  tells me what I can know and admit to knowing,  
>  that all I ever wanted  
>  was to sit by a fire with someone  
>  who wanted me in measure the same to my wanting.  
>  To want to make a fire with someone,  
>  with you,  
>  was all.
> 
> "All I Ever Wanted," by Katie Ford

  
  
  
  


"Tyrion?"

It's a whisper. He opens his eyes, but it doesn't make much of a difference; the room is dark, and the bed is empty by his side.

"Husband." It's _her_ voice. She shakes his shoulder. "Wake up."

As his eyes adapt to the darkness he feels the mattress moving under him. He recognizes her form moving around their chambers, just a shadow in the darkness.

It's so cold. He wonders if it's snowing.

"Sansa?" He narrows his eyes, and suddenly feels his heart racing. Maybe there's an attack, a danger. "What is happening?"

"I can't sleep," she says. 

His brain is lazy and that doesn't explain a thing. They hardly sleep through the night.

"Yes, but..." She is not wearing a night gown, he notes; those are usually cream, or white. No, she is almost camouflaged against the blackness around her. "Why are you dressed?"

"You should get dressed too." She comes closer again and throws something at him. He is startled for a moment, raising his hands reflexively, and feels only soft fabric on his fingers. 

Oh. Clothes. His clothes. "Why are you running away?"

She chuckles. "Don't be silly. We are not running away." He listens to the clatter of rock against rock and then there's a dim light, one single candle lit. He feels slow, but can't help but be surprised with how quickly she can make the stones produce a spark. "I want to show you something."

"Show me something," he repeats, confused. "As in _outside_ this chamber."

"Yes." She uses the candle to light up another taper. He can see her better, now, and she looks... Ready, braided hair and all. Sansa has always been a morning person, more than him, who just raises sooner than her because the pain in his hips wakes him up every day.

But it's not _morning_ yet, though he feels that it will be soon; the air changes some hours before the dawn. "Darling, it's dark and cold. Come back to bed."

"No," she says, stubborn, and he smirks, despite himself. He likes it when she sounds young. "It will be worth it, I promise."

He gets up, grunting a little because of the hurt and chill in his bones, and moves behind the screen to put his clothes on.

"Hurry, husband," she mutters, impatient. "We will be late."

"Late _for what?_ ," he grumbles. "You really won't tell me where are we going?"

"I won't. It's a surprise." He gets out. When they are close enough she wraps his scarf around his neck, puts his cloak over his shoulders, clasps it with a pin, and hands him one of the candles. She leaves the room and he has no choice but to follow her (how _couldn't_ he) as she walks across corridors with complete confidence, keeping one hand on the granite walls, turning to the left, and then to the right: just the two of them and their shadows, flickering. He can listen as she counts under her breath; he did it, too, when he was a child, counted his steps to Joanna's grave in the dark, found his way through fingertips. When they get to a ladder she stops, offers him a gloved hand and he holds it. They climb up; she doesn't seem bothered by his clumsy gait, or the fact the steps are too steep for him to accompany her rhythm. She keeps counting, even when they are breathless and need to stop for a break: one hundred and thirty five steps in spiral, and then there's a door, and after it one single straight corridor, windowless walls surrounding them. When they get to the end of it, she opens another door and a rush of cold wind comes in, blowing their candles out.

"Seven _Hells_ ," Tyrion curses, hiding his hands inside his cloak. She closes the door behind them but he can't move his feet; they are finally outside, on the ramparts. The night is still dark, and he will surely freeze to death. "It's so _cold_. We should come back."

Surprisingly, it's not snowing. It's hard to tell, but he thinks he sees when she smiles with the corner of her mouth, her eyes gleaming with excitement. "Absolutely not. We are almost there."

He sighs as he follows her. His breath plumes in front of him. "My hips will be destroyed after this."

She doesn't stop her way. "You are going to be one of those angry, bitter old men who complain about everything."

"I'm already an angry, bitter old man who complains about everything," he mutters. He didn't mean it to be funny, but she laughs, anyway.

"Well, that's almost true."

There's another staircase, leading to the top of a tower. He sighs again. "I mean it, Sansa. I'm too old for adventures in the middle of the night."

"This is the last one. And you're not that old," she says. He can listen to the pieces in her brain fitting together, for a few seconds, and, then, finally— "How old are you?"

"Thirty and two," he answers as they start to climb up the steps. 

"But—" Even if he can only see her cloaked back, he imagines her eyebrows frowning together as she does the math once more. She gives a glance over her shoulder; he can see only the outlined half of her face, turned to him. "When is your name-day?"

They get to the top of the tower; Tyrion realizes it is, actually, the gatehouse. "It was three months ago." He stops, does the math himself. "The second day of the full moon," he adds, and finally looks up and around.

He misses a breath, his words suddenly lost, the conversation forgotten: he can only see the dome of the sky above them, of a blue so dark that it is almost black, and the stars. There are so many he can't count them; at first they seem all white, but as his eyes adapt, he is able differentiate their pale, sparkling colors: red, and blue, and yellow, and pink, and gold. It is a moonless night, but the world gleams under their pallid light, the weak silhouettes of Winter Town: houses, buildings, wells, trees covered in snow, the Kingsroad. 

(It makes Tyrion think about the end of the world, the curtain of light beyond the Wall, flying on Rhaegal's back, and the freedom, and the fear of dying, and finally overcoming it, conquering it. And for the first time since Rhaegal died, he feels it— like— maybe it wasn't only that he was ready to die, maybe, just maybe, he was very eagerly ready to _live_ , to live well, to thrive; he has wanted it, always, against the world; his personal, sustained rebellion. And maybe he had finally won.

Maybe there's no need to fight anymore).

"Worth it?" she asks, standing by his side. His head is bent back; he is trying to capture it, to be _part_ of it (of the _beauty_ ). It's all so _immense_ , broad, vast. For a moment, he feels small (in a good way).

"Worth it," he answers. He can't take his eyes from the sky. "Thank you, my lady."

"The sun will rise soon," she says. "I thought you would like it. Bran brought me here once." He looks at her, then. Her eyes are on the sky, too, the contour of her face is barely recognizable but it is there, blurred in the faint light. "Maester Luwin had an observatory, but he never taught me much about the sky. He just told me once that some people use it to navigate." She chortles wryly. Her voice is sweet, low, distant. She could be talking about someone else, not herself, not her kin. "I suppose he just assumed girls wouldn't use the information. I wasn't too invested in learning it, anyway."

"Sansa, the Captain," he tries. Three seconds later and she is laughing. (He laughs, too, mostly because she sounds lovely when she laughs).

"That is cruel," she mutters, smiling when her laughter fades.

"But why not?" he japes. "You could sail across the Narrow Sea. Conquer lands far beyond Westeros, leave this cursed place," he hides his hands under his cloak, inside the pockets of his breeches. "You could make a big title for yourself. Like Dany."

"I can't leave." She embraces herself, looks down just for a second before looking up to the sky again, with a sadness that leaves him wondering if this is the first time the idea was considered an option, even as a joke. "And besides, how does one _actually_ uses the stars as a guide? The sky is not the same every night. No wonder people get lost and never find their way back."

"Some constellations point always North, or South." He closes one eye and points to the sky. "See that one? Ice Dragon?"

She tilts her head to the side. "Maybe? I'm not sure."

"The one with a blue star in the rider's eye? The blue star is always pointing North, the tail always South."

Her eyes and smile widen, and she clutches his arm. "I can see it! I can."

He smiles, too, and searches another one; aims to a constellation near the horizon, over a trail of a dark-purple nebulosa. "That one is the Crone's Lantern."

"Yes. I can see it too." (She doesn't let go of his arm.)

"And... If you look left and up," he points with the arm she is not holding, "you can see the Shadowcat constellation."

"That doesn't look like a shadowcat, my lord." Sansa frowns, and he grins.

"Have you ever seen a shadowcat?"

"No." She straightens her shoulders defensively. "But it can't be very different from a... Regular cat."

Tyrion laughs, shakes his head, thinks about saying it out loud, _you are adorable, just adorable_ ; doesn't. "Well. The wise maesters of the Citadel are the ones to blame. I'm merely passing the knowledge on."

"Why only the maesters can determinate the architecture of the sky?" she protests. "That constellation over there," she points at a group of seven small yellow stars in the east, "they look like a giant trout, like the sigil of my lady mother's house. From now on I say they are... Catelyn's constellation."

His heart swells a little. It is a particularly _dazzling_ set of stars, and besides, they actually _do_ look like a fish.

(And he feels, for just a fraction of a second, that if she asked for the stars, for the _whole_ sky, he would find a way to give it to her. He would name stars after her. If anyone in the world deserves it—)

"You know," he begins, "the Dothraki believe the stars are the soul of the dead. They shine depending on how they lived."

A winter breeze sighs around them, tries to play with her hair. Her eyes are on the sky but they wander, distant, vacant. "So the brightest star...?"

She trails off. For a moment he thinks he could love her, just because of that silence, those fading words. "Yes," he says, as low as he can, as if he speaks too loud he will break something, create a rift between them.

Her face is like a statue, carved in stone, a mask of calm: she searches, and searches, until she finds it. 

The brightest star shines alone: it doesn't seem to belong to any particular constellation, although neither of them could truly know. "There," she says. "Hello, father."

It is only a whisper, and he is not sure he was supposed to hear that, but he does and feels something inside him breaking, and breaking, and hurting. But there's no space for him in that pain; it belongs to her alone, he has no right to it. So Tyrion merely touches her fingers, still on his arm, and she slides her hand until it intertwines in his own. And they share the silence for the longest time. He trembles when the wind rushes around them; she notices, comes closer and wraps one arm around him, as naturally as the night allows them to. ( _Weak_ , he thinks as his head rests against her side, _you're so fucking weak_.) 

He doesn't know what she is thinking about, and doesn't ask. His mind is filled with memories of home, remembering how the sky looked like from the cliffs of the Rock. But then, the first beams of sunlight appear over the horizon, before the sun itself. He lifts his head to watch better as the sun rises, and rises, and rises: rays of sunshine breaking through the dense clouds marking the horizon, and the sky above them changing from dark-blue to purple to red and orange and just blue, at the summit, limpid and clear; among the morning mist, Winter Town is rising with it, women with buckets over their heads walking towards the wells; birds singing, stars fading and fading. Inside the walls of Winterfell, people are raising as well; they can hardly see through the fog as a group of women and some children walk to the oven inside the Kitchen.

"Good morning," he says, and Sansa smiles, and it burns brighter than the sun.

"Good morning."

(There is a winter kind of light, pale-white and cold, that leaves the world colorless: grey, or black, or white, as if one just needs the contrasts, as if the colors are some dispensable vanity. It binds the world together, though: everything is _Nature_ , everything shares common ground, raw and wild. There’s a melancholic poetry to it, a beauty, even.

But Tyrion knows for a fact there is no winter in this _world_ powerful enough to completely wash out the fire in Sansa's hair, or the sky-blue of her eyes. He knows she thinks about herself as a winter woman, but she is wrong. Sansa is of spring.)

"It’s beautiful, isn't it?" she says, smiling in awe, eyes not even blinking, and he takes in the light rose in her cheeks and lips, the freckles running down the bridge of her nose, the air coming out from her mouth in a white smoke over her face, stars and suns and galaxies in her eyes.

"Beautiful," he agrees, and when she turns to look at him he doesn't look away. "Beautiful."

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


It turns out that Tyrion is, indeed, too old for adventures in the middle of the night.

There is no point in going back to bed, and so they eat breakfast together and part their ways: Sansa goes with Rickon, Tyrion with Arya and Gendry. But when they reunite to eat the midday meal together at the Great Hall, Tyrion can barely keep his eyes open over his food. All his muscles feel sore and tired.

Arya laughs by his side. "Did you have fun last night?" she japes, and he blinks once, twice. He sees when Sansa tenses, just for a second.

"I did," he smirks wickedly, refusing to give in. "You wouldn't believe the places I've been, my lady." (Arya hates when he calls her _my lady_.)

"Where have you been?" Rickon asks, and Sansa blushes. Tyrion avoids her eyes.

"Don't answer him. He is just a child," Arya mutters.

"Do you take me for a pervert?" Tyrion asks, feigning offense, "and besides, _where_ do you assume I've been?"

"Yes, if the rumors are true, you are a pervert. Of sorts," Arya shrugs.

"I'm not a child," Rickon reminds them.

"Eat your food, Rickon," Sansa says, coldly. "Where Lord Tyrion has been last night is not of your concern."

"But I want to know," he insists.

"To the stars, my lord," Tyrion answers, and can't hold back a yawn. "I've visited the stars."

"There is no such a thing," Rickon says, in a matter-of-fact tone that brings a proud smile to Tyrion's lips.

"You should retire, my lord," Sansa suggests, courteously. "Perhaps a little nap would make you feel better."

He snorts. "Please. I don't need to take a nap."

"Yes, you do," Arya says, chewing a piece of her meat.

"Arya, don't talk while you're eating," Sansa asks, seemingly tired, too.

"Daytime is for work," Tyrion says, rubbing his eyes. "Naps are for slothful people."

"What is wrong with you?" Arya mutters, and drinks a gulp of wine. "Everybody naps. Gendry and I can handle the masons. You're not that _necessary_."

"Thank you, my lady. You always keep me humble."

Sansa chortles a short laugh. "She is right, though," and before he can start another protest, "Everyone needs a little rest, occasionally. Who told you that naps are for the slothful?" she asks, and there is something sharp and witty in her eyes that lets him know unequivocally: she knows the answer.

(Of course it was Tywin. _Wherever you are_ , he thinks, _fuck you, father._ )

And so, when everyone else leaves the Great Hall and just the two of them stay behind, Sansa reaches out a hand to him and presses her lips together to hide her smile. He looks at her face, and then at her hand, before he takes it.

She guides them to their chambers. The bedroom is still bright with sunlight, but even so, Sansa lights up the fire in the hearth, takes two blue cushions resting on the couch and sits down on the rug of furs before the fireplace. "When I need to take a nap, I usually sleep here," she says. Tyrion just stares at her. She gives him one of the cushions and lies down, placing the other under her head; her hand dabs the empty space by her side. "Come here."

There is no point in resisting. He lies down by her side, and for a moment, just looks at her face: her glistening blue eyes, her almost-smiling lips.

"What is it?" she asks, and he smiles.

"Nothing." She is at arm's length (one of _his_ arms) from him; he keeps his hands to himself. His body starts to relax, muscles loosening. "Just admiring my wife."

Her eyes divert from his, a little, shy smile pulling the corners of her mouth up. She slides her hand over the carpet to take his again. "You should have told me about your name-day."

Oh.

"Don't worry," Tyrion says. "I don't usually celebrate, anyway. There's not much to celebrate."

"How can you say that?" she mutters, offended. "You are _alive_."

Tyrion can understand why she is so upset about his lack of gratitude, but really, he has no energy at the moment (or ever) to discuss the subject, and so he holds his silence. Realization slowly dawns on her: he sees it, embarrassment, and then pity, and then just plain sadness.

"Jon's mother, my aunt, died in the birth-bed, too. It... Happens, sometimes," she says, voice small and gentle, as she plays with his fingers. "It was not your fault."

He doesn't believe in such thing at all, but she, apparently, does, and it makes his heart sting: her kind, unspoiled _naivety_ , the fresh honesty of her words, like she could heal thirty and two years of emptiness and guilt with a simple sentence: _not your fault_. His voice sounds vacant, dry. "Yes, yes, I know. Of course."

"Look at me," her palm cups his cheek, forcing him to face her. She looks in pain. "What can I do for you?"

Unless she is a secret red priest and can bring the dead back, nothing.

"Just stay here a while," he asks. "I'm cold." 

She nods, pulling him closer, wrapping her arms around his shoulders, as if she is trying to shield him. (This is how he has always imagined a mother's embrace would be, more or less: like holy water poured out from a god he doesn't believe in; like grace, like mercy, like undeserved kindness.) She runs her fingers through his hair and he hides his face in the valley between her breasts, tired but more comfortable than he had any right to be.

"Sleep," she murmurs, kissing the top of his head. "I'll be here when you wake."

He doesn't want to, but his lids get heavier and heavier, and so he closes his eyes.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


Tyrion wakes up from his dreamless sleep, and then keeps his eyes shut.

He is still in her arms. Her fingers run gently across his back; he barely feels it over his tunic. He breathes in her scent (sugar, roses) and listens when she smiles. "Hello," she says. Her whole body loosely accommodates to his; for a fraction of a second, he can't think straight. She is soft in all the places he isn't and he feels cozy and weirdly indolent, even if most of the tiredness is gone. "Better?"

"Better." He places a hand on her waist, keeps his head low. "Haven't you slept?"

"No. I've been watching you." Her pads wander carelessly on the sides of his body, and then his chest. He holds his breath. "I don't normally have the chance to do so. You are never there when I wake up."

He doesn't say that he leaves earlier so she won't be forced to witness him change his clothes under daylight, even with the screen. (And then thinks about everything else he hides from her.) "What can I do? There is work to be done. I can't allow myself to be as lazy as you." She hits him on the arm, maybe harder than necessary. " _Ouch_ , Sansa! I'm _joking_."

"I'm not lazy."

.".. Says the woman who invited me to sleep with her in the middle of the afternoon," he mocks.

"I didn't invite you to sleep with _me_."

"And yet here you are."

He finally opens his eyes to look at hers and they are smiling, although her mouth isn't. How does she _does_ that? "And yet here I am." 

He has always loved her eyes, and even more so since he came to live in Winterfell; the blue in them are like summer, a southerner sky in the midst of all the white and gray. He likes how they contrast with the red in her hair, now golden under the flames of the hearth burning behind his back. He has lost track of time, of space; Tyrion could not say if outside is still cold, if it is already dark, because if he could just reach out a hand—

( _You should leave before you lose control_ , says a voice in his head, but he just ignores it. The voice speaks the same mantra every day, specially when she smiles, or laughs, or looks at his face as if she is trying to say something: he needs to come back home, this marriage isn't real, she doesn't want the same things as he does, etc., etc. Now, it seems of little importance.)

It happens as everything else between them happens: in silence and wordlessly. She is lying on her side, just as he is, bodies turned to each other, and Sansa brings him closer, hesitant, afraid; but he yields, maybe too easily. When she envelops his shoulders and pulls him impossibly closer still, though, there is something different in her embrace. They always hold each other gently; whether they are trying to fall asleep or merely providing comfort, it has always been of uttermost importance to keep this freedom of movement, freedom to leave, if they wished so. Now she presses him sternly against herself, as if trying to merge herself with him, to overcome the inconvenient barrier of clothes and skin. There is no space between them anymore, no place of his body that hers is not touching: her chest against his chest and her cheek against his cheek. Tyrion closes his eyes, trying to reason and failing, and he notices they are _shaking_ , or something very close to it.

Everywhere. She is everywhere, it is overwhelming, it leaves him breathless, and he thinks, _leave, get up and leave, you should leave._ He tries to. He knows his arousal is evident, knows it is impossible that she is not feeling it pressing between her legs, but when he starts to withdraw with a embarrassed "I'm sorry," she holds his hips in place: "Don't move." Her voice is a scared, fragile thing; he nods, feeling scared and fragile himself. His hand hesitantly slides down from her waist to her hip, right to the salience of her bones, where he knows she likes to be touched. The sudden whistle of air he listens is, definitely, not fear. His thumb strokes the spot in small circles, the rest of his hand wrapping her waist. She sighs, he sighs. It's not pleasure, Tyrion thinks; it is _relief_ , like breathing again after a long time drowning. "Close your eyes," he says, low, whispered, just for her, even if there is no one else in the room. She looks him in the eye one last time, long enough so he can see when her uncertainty dissolves into trust, and obeys to his word.

 _Stop. Stop now_ , says something in his head, a lucid, wise voice that he promptly disregards. His hand starts to slip through the side of her body, like he is so used to, but now, pushing the boundaries a little further; it is a forgotten habit that makes him palm the back of her thigh, gently raising her knee to the level of his hips until she is resting one leg over him, around him. "Oh," she breathes, and her hand searches for his chest, her fingers clutching his tunic and one eyebrow knitting slightly.

"Too much?" he asks, because now his hardness presses even more against her and it feels deliriously good; he can feel his own heart hammering against his thorax. Gods, this is a bad idea. This is _such a bad idea_. 

She takes her time to answer. He sees her lids fluttering; she catches her lower lip between her teeth. "No."

Not too much. Not _enough_. He runs his hand up and down her raised thigh wrapped around him, thinks about slipping his hand under her skirts and then gives up. His touch is shy and hesitant and trembling; there is a battle in his mind between that part of him that wants to dig in his fingers in her flesh and the other one who believes she will push him away, any moment, now. But she doesn't, and he bites his tongue so the words won't roll off against his will, _I want you I want you I want you_. His hands wander, unplanned, hungry. He feels her arms, from shoulders to wrists, brushes his fingers on her belly, slides a finger up over her breastbone: soft, slow, the way he imagines she would like it, the way he has wanted to touch her for so long. Her breathing comes in short fits, little starts; she looks surprised, melting under his hands, so sensitive, responsive to the tiniest changes of pressure in his fingers, jolting and dithering. His fingers dig in her scalp, massaging it gently, and then run down her nape, her shoulders, feeling the fragrance of her hair; she hides her face in the crook of his neck, muffling something against his skin, a soft and low noise that may or may not be a moan and that sounds like a _yes_ , but regardless, is the most beautiful sound he has ever heard from her. He returns to her hips, glides his hand up, past the downfall and the rise of her waist, and stops right where he can feel the bones of her rib-cage. One more inch and he will touch her breasts. Tyrion is suddenly acutely aware of how little control he has left. He wants her to the point of pain— actual, real pain. His cock _is_ pulsing and throbbing with frustrated lust for her, and he fights back the urge to thrust his hips against her, just _once_ —

"Ask me to stop, Sansa," he murmurs with the last drop of sense in his mind, and only then realizes his breath is short too. His lips brush on the lobe of her ear. "Before I can do something terribly stupid."

She is trembling all over. When she draws away her face and opens her eyes they are dark, and she sees right through him. 

She takes his hand, and carefully separates it from her body: guides it to his chest and keeps is there, eyes never leaving his, not until their breathing are normal again. She stares at his mouth and then at his eyes. "Maybe I should leave," she says, simply.

"You should," he nods, and she withdraws her hand first, then lowers her leg (Tyrion immediately misses the warmth of her flesh against his cock, even across layers of clothes), then shifts her body away.

And for five infinite seconds, they just lie back staring at the ceiling and wondering what the hell just happened.

She gets up, straightens her skirts, and he can't look at her. It is so bright, there is so much light. He feels shame overcoming him like a punch in the face. Maybe he should apologize.

She stares down at him again, mouth agape, cheeks flushed. Gods, she is beautiful when she blushes. "I'm leaving," she says. "If you will excuse me, my lord."

He can't help a smirk, despite... Everything else. "You said that already. _My lady_."

"I know. I'm only being polite," she explains. (He tries to remember the last time he saw her _nervous_.)

"Of course you are, my dear." He sees when she spares a glance at the bulge in his crotch and almost, very nearly, laughs. He needs to fix that. Maybe he should take a bath. "Sansa."

"Yes?"

He points vaguely at his own head. "Your hair is a mess."

She blinks. "Yes. Yes, that makes sense," she mumbles to herself, and starts to walk away.

"Sansa." She turns around, almost desperate, and he points to his right. "The mirror is behind the _other_ door, sweetheart."

She nods slowly, blushing a shade darker, and Tyrion considers calling her to come closer again, just so he can kiss her. But of course this is another bad idea. Kisses are for lovers, and this is no love. This is _no love_ , he says to himself, even when her head and legs get all confused and in different directions and he feels oddly, insanely overwhelmed with joy just because she is the way she is and he has the honor to witness it. "Indeed," she says, and turns to the right, points to the bathroom. "I'm going–"

"You go, darling."

"Yes. Excuse me. Again."

He listens to the door opening, and then closing, and groans in frustration to no one in particular. She gets out a minute later, hair properly braided again, and walks directly towards the way out of the room; stops at the door, looks back at him. She seems... Composed. "Don't you have work to do?"

"Sure," he nods. "I'm coming. In a minute."

And Sansa narrows her eyes, her cheeks reddening again before she leaves the room and Tyrion thinks he is a really, really bad person.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


Instead of working, Tyrion spends the rest of the day in the glass gardens. The heat from the earth is not human heat: it doesn't pulse and shiver, but it is enough to keep his mind and body mildly comfortable. It is easy to occupy his mind with trimming branches, feeding the soil, planting seeds. Some of the plants are almost blossoming into flowers and he tries his best to keep Sansa out of his mind: he doesn't think about her face changing from surprise to awe to pleasure, doesn't remember the warmth of her short breath close to his face, doesn't recall the sound of her approval against his neck, or the softness of her curves, doesn't try to imagine how they must feel like without clothes in his way.

(He doesn't think about how it is possible that he ruined everything).

At night, he retires sooner to their chambers, availing the chance to read and answer Jon's and Dany's letters, when Sansa comes in. "My lord," she greets, and takes her cloak off, folding it.

"My lady," he says, quickly looking up from the parchment.

She hides behind the screen and he listens while she takes the rest of her clothes off. It happens every night, but he can't remember the last time it had felt like torture. She slides from behind it covered in her night shift, takes the cup of tea waiting for her at her side of the bed and sits in her favorite chair: turned to the window, conveniently placed by the side of the table where he is working at the moment.

It is not, Tyrion knows, an invitation to conversation, but he gets distracted by her all the same: the chill bristling the hair of her arms, her white hands wrapped around her teacup, nose breathing in the scent of mint and chamomile. She looks at him in silence, and he holds her gaze, and refuses to be the first one to look away or say something.

She surrenders, then. "What are you working on?"

He shrugs. "Finishing a letter to your brother."

"Jon?"

"Yes." He resumes his work, but feels Sansa's gaze on him.

"Why?"

He frowns. "Because I'm not willing to go to the Wall every month just to check if he is healthy and well."

"Every month?" Sansa asks, surprised. "You write to him every month?"

He finishes the letter, waiting for the ink to dry. "Well, yes."

"I didn't know that you were close," she mutters.

He shrugs. "Jon is family." Something flickers in her face, as if she is thwarting herself from speaking. "Are you jealous, my lady? I'm not stealing him from you," Tyrion japes.

"I'm not jealous," she says, resigned, and finishes her tea, puts the cup aside. "He is coming home the next moon."

"I know. He told me," Tyrion says, rolling the parchment in his hands and sealing it with wax, and Sansa scoffs, frustrated.

"Family, you said," she mumbles. "Like a brother?"

Tyrion ponders if he should tell her. Probably not. "Not like a brother, but-" he presses his ring against the wax. "But I love him, and I couldn't love him more even if he were of my blood."

Sansa stares at him, and he knows the words scare her, mostly because they were true and it is impossible not to notice when someone is telling a truth from the heart. There is no way to explain that to her. Family is a narrow concept for Tyrion; he can't put Jon in a category in the same way he can easily think of Dany as his mother, because Daenerys is pretty much everyone's mother. Jon Snow, though, is something else entirely. Jaime was, _is_ , a brother, for better or for worse. Jon was chosen; Jon is _his_. It is, at the same time, much more and less than blood.

"Do you think about me as your family?" she asks, and he feels cold from head to toes.

"Well- yes," he says, finally, after a second too long. "You are my wife."

But it is too late. Sansa, of course, notices it.

"I shouldn't have asked this," she says, courteously. "I'm sorry."

(There is no way to explain that to her, either: she can't be family, because she doesn't belong to him; Sansa is not _his_. And he is not _hers_. And in the end, there is nothing entailing them together for good: nothing that could keep him from leaving, when the time comes.

He will miss her, terribly, but that is not her problem.)

"Don't be sorry," he says. "It's a legitimate question."

And for a second, he thinks she will _ask_ : her mouth opens, but nothing leaves it but a tired sigh, and her eyes melt like her body did under the ministrations of his hands, and his heart races.

Instead–

"I'm retiring to bed," she says, sounding a little out of her breath, and gets up.

"Sansa–"

And she looks right into his eyes, pleading, desperate. "Yes?"

He sighs. "Nothing. Sleep well."

She nods and walks away. He watches her back as she blows the candles around the bed out, back turned to his direction when she lies down on the mattress.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Maybe it was his afternoon nap, but he feels sleepless. It is very late when Tyrion comes to bed, late enough so the castle is deadly silent, and it feels like that morning, when she woke him up to watch the sunrise, was a lifetime ago. 

He lies down by her side and reaches out one arm, touching her shoulder. "I know you are awake."

Her blue eyes twinkle open, their gleaming the only thing he can see in the dark. He listens when she sighs in frustration. "I think you spoiled me."

"Come here," he murmurs, and she slips into his arms under the blankets so easily that he is almost angry with her. All of this would be mortally easier if she just ignored him, like she used to.

"Do you think I'm a selfish wife and an awful person?" she asks.

"You're as far from awful as anyone could possible be, Sansa." He uses the hand attached to the stunted arm which is not, at the moment, serving as her pillow, to tiredly rub his face. "Don't be delirious."

"I behaved most improperly this afternoon," she says, all duty and courtesy, but it is hard to believe her when her arms are wrapped around his torso like that, and when her hair spreads around his chest like a blanket. "And I am sorry."

Of course she is _sorry_.

"It doesn't have to happen again, if you are not comfortable with..." With _what_ , gods. What was that? "With being touched like that. I'm sorry, too."

(It is a lie; he isn't. He would do it again, and more, if given the chance.)

"It is not about you," she murmurs, and he feels the words crawling their way up to his neck. "The reason why I can't–"

"Sansa," he says, softly. "We are all right."

(Because just like that, with her calm breathing and her shy words, Tyrion realizes he would lie forever if it meant to keep her _here_ , inside his arms, one more night: he would swear it, _it meant nothing_ , and _I don't want you_ , if she asked him.)

"Thank you," she murmurs, relieved, settling her face against his chest, and it hurts more than it should. He caresses her hair, feels as she starts to relax.

"I suppose this was the reason why you couldn't sleep?" he asks, kissing the crown of her hair. She shakes her head.

"I don't think so. I guess I'm no longer capable of falling asleep without you."

"Cold?"

"Of course not. I don't have southerner sensibilities like you," she japes. "I can handle the cold."

"Is that so? Why are you so _close_ , then?"

"I like to listen to your heartbeat," she whispers. Her fingers draw the left side of his thorax, as if she is trying to guess the borders of his heart. "It calms me down."

"Oh." He pauses, thinks about that for a second. "Really? You should have told me. I would have come to bed earlier."

And her fingers slide his arm, up, down, in lazy, soft movements, and for some reason, instead of remembering her face as he explored her body, he remembers how she looked like under starlight. Shining, precious, infinite; galaxies, oceans away from him.

"When I was a child I used to listen to father's heart, every time I had nightmares," she explains, after a very long silence.

"I'm sorry," he murmurs, and remembers: _"hello, father"_. Sometimes Tyrion fears her pain will never end; that her beauty will always be like that, a melancholic longing, worn out by the time, like the ruins of a city: something that used to be great, and alive, and warm, once.

"It is fine," she says, sweet as ever. "All the hearts beat the same, I think. It's one of my favorite sounds in the world."

"A beating heart?" and Tyrion thinks, _gods, Sansa. Gods._

"Yes. A beating heart."

(Many years ahead, Tyrion will trace back his love for her; he will find this moment and he will identify the peaceful silence that follows her words, the awe flooding his chest like an avalanche, the ache in his heart at the purity in her voice, for what it is.

But not now. Now he keeps it nameless, and kisses her hair again, and waits. Every memory, every scar— he can't miss a thing.)

"I feel like I'm using you to remember Robb or father or Bran. Because I'm so scared I will forget them. I don't trust my memory. It has betrayed me before." (She always tries to keep her voice empty and emotionless when she talks about them. She never makes it.) "And I'm sorry about that too. I never meant to use you, but I think sometimes, not every night, but some nights, I do."

And Tyrion holds her closer. It is wrong, he thinks, to feel this sort of delight at the expenses of her suffering and grief. It just reassures him how much of a bad man he is. "I don't mind," he murmurs against her hair. "Use me whenever you need."

"Do you use me to remember someone else?"

Why does she always has to be so smart? Damn her.

"Sometimes," he answers.

"You don't want to talk about her, do you?"

"I don't. And believe me, you wouldn't want to hear."

"Don't you think I can handle you, my lord? That is very condescending."

He laughs wryly and looks down, trying to catch a glimpse of her face under the pale light from the stars.

"You are so brave, Sansa. I wish I could be brave like you."

"You won't talk," she says, resigned.

"No. I'm sorry."

"Can I ask just one more thing?"

"You can ask. I'm not assuring your answer."

"What was her name?"

His body reacts before his mind: tensing, loosening his grip around her. He forces his arms to keep her close.

"What difference does it make?" he asks, dryly.

"It doesn't," she says.

It really doesn't, he thinks, and the pain is just the way he expected it to be.

"Tysha. Her name was Tysha." Tyrion never speaks her name out loud; he thinks about her on a daily basis, but to speak her name tastes sour, and he feels sudden tears stinging in his eyes. They don't spill and fall, but the reaction of his body is immediate and it scares him. "Don't ask me anything else and never mention her name again."

"I won't." She kisses his breastbone over his tunic and he sighs. _Don't do that_ , he wants to ask, _help me not to love you_ , but doesn't. "My lord?"

"Yes?"

"Thank you."

He is not sure what she is thanking him for, so he doesn't answer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Here](https://img.purch.com/h/1400/aHR0cDovL3d3dy5zcGFjZS5jb20vaW1hZ2VzL2kvMDAwLzA0NS85ODMvb3JpZ2luYWwvYXJjdHVydXMtbGFrZS1oYXJ0LmpwZw==) is a picture of the sky as I imagined it. 
> 
> I've been very very sick these last days. I'm sorry for the delay.
> 
> title is "nothing more than that", by the paper kites. also, everything that katie ford writes is just a gift to humankind.


	12. if this sinking ship goes down

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't hate me!!!1!1! #badwriter
> 
> I have not abandoned this fanfic, and I plan to finish it.
> 
> Let me explain to you the reason for such a massive delay and overall disappearance of my part: since the last week of 2018, I've been travelling with some friends through Europe. I have to unpack, but soon I will answer all your lovely comments and read all your amazing fanfics and yeah. xx we're back to business. 
> 
> 💖

  
  
  


> I am trying to forget your fingers in each  
>  skipped space. I am trying to forget the frogs  
>  falling one by one, their tear sound, that  
>  sighing stone. I tell you there is no moon.  
>  I know I have loved you only in darkness.
> 
> Alison Stine

  


> You must ask yourself:  
>  where is it snowing?
> 
> White of forgetfulness,  
>  of desecration—
> 
> (It is snowing on earth; the cold wind says)
> 
> (...)
> 
> Persephone  
>  was used to death. Now over and over  
>  her mother hauls her out again –
> 
> You must ask yourself:  
>  are the flowers real?
> 
> "Persephone the Wanderer," by Louise Glück

  
  
  
  
  
When Jon comes home with his little party of three brother of the Night's Watch, like a black wolf in the snow, Sansa feels like breathing for the first time in months.

He looks so much like Ned that it _almost_ hurts her, but Jon is Jon, and Jon never hurts. Sansa, Arya and Rickon welcome them with all the formalities and courtesies, surrounded by the white snow and the slowly raised black towers, until Podrick leads the brothers (new ones, that Sansa had never seen before, but the Night's Watch prestige had been renewed after... Well, after) to their chambers, and Arya all but jumps in Jon's arms. He laughs against her dark hair, two wolves entangled in each other. Arya never looks so young as she does when Jon is home, and so Sansa smiles. Rickon is in line to be the next; he knows little of Jon Snow, but knows enough to like him (maybe for the same reason he connected so easily to Sansa, once they've been reunited; an orphan is always an orphan). Jon smiles to him, calls him "my lord" but pats his hair.

And so Sansa is the last. He raises his eyes to her and gives her a smile only with his eyes. (She has lost track of time and facts, during the Long Night, and so Sansa is not sure if she learned to smile like that with him, or if he learned it with her; or maybe, this is just who they are. Funny how things change. She would have never believed that Jon would become the closest to her heart.) "My lady," he greets her, all warmth and gentleness, and Sansa just throws her arms around his neck and breathes in his scent. It's Ned, all Ned, leather and fresh snow. He holds her close, steadying both of them. 

"Thank the gods you're home," she murmurs, and closes her eyes.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


This is what Sansa knows about her husband:

Whatever happened, wherever he had been, it changed him. From many angles, he is pretty much the same; his words are still his weapon, he is still as ugly as ever, his brain is still the best part of him. But in some aspects he is more than he was, and in other aspects, he is less than he used to be. 

Sansa remembers him walking around in King's Landing like a golden little king who owned everyone, like a _lion_. He was the kind of man who refused to look anywhere but into your eyes, probably because he knew the effect his mismatched ones provoked; the kind of man who knew exactly which words to use, wielding his speech with the skill of a warrior. Now, he looks away. To the nearest window, to his hands, to the ground. There is something rotten in him, the sweet, sickening perfume of death that follows him wherever he goes; she remembers he couldn't keep quiet or shut his mouth, but now, there is a constant boredom in his eyes, like everything, all the time, is a tiresome burden to him: during meetings, during work, at night in front of the fireplace. She is not sure he is aware of how tired he looks all the time.

If he still seeks for whores, like in the past, he does so very discreetly, because Sansa has never noticed any signs of it.

There is the shape of his witty words, sharp and precise, and his humor is always sour at his best and ruthless at his worst; but there are moments where Sansa swears she had never met someone so kind in her life: when he is patient with Rickon, when he calls Gendry to the table with them when Arya is not around, merely justifying it because he is "fond of bastards"; when his laughter is pure; in the rare moments he stares into her eyes with enough light in the room so she can see them melting and burning; when he kisses her brow when he thinks she's already asleep and she is sure he _cares_ , in this weird way of his, making her blush with inappropriate commentaries and naughty jokes and holding her at night.

Sansa doesn't know what to do with this feeling of _pendency_ , of something hanging, waiting to be cut out or knotted for good. There is still something in him, hungry and grasping at her insides and needy and demanding and she wishes she knew what is it, exactly, that he honestly wants. It was easier when he only wanted to bed her. Now she doesn't know anymore. Now she is not even sure this is the only thing he has wanted from her, all this time.

But life is easier at Winterfell now, after the glass gardens are finished: through the hard winter, there are sweet fruits in the morning meals and fresh vegetables at dinner, though no flower has grown yet. (Tyrion says flowers are harder to grow, that they take time). An old northerner tradition says that the Lord of the land should provide bread for their liegemen. Now that they're safe from hunger, Sansa suggests it during a council meeting, a week before Jon arrives, that they reconstruct the oven of Winter Town and start to supply them with corn. Tyrion frowns, confused. "For free? Why would we do that?" he asks. Arya is the one to explain it to him, that Starks of many generations ago began to do it during spring and that it is reasonable to try it now that the winter is milder. He takes a very long time thinking about it. Sansa does not judge him, at first; the mere idea of Tywin Lannister serving food for his vassals is laughable. But as the meeting goes on, and he opposes every suggestion that appears to make the plan work, saying they don't have enough in store, or that the greenhouse's capacity is not enough for it, or that they can't travel to White Harbor all the time, it begins to upset her. She knows he often helps Arya with the practical managements of Winterfell, and he is resourceful and smart, but he is a Lannister living in the North. There are limits he must respect.

They are hard on each other that day, after, behind the closed doors of their chambers (never before the observant eyes of the servants and friends and family and anyone else beside the two of them who could never understand what is it that they share, this proto-marriage, this half-something-coming-into-being and never fulfilling it, never accomplishing, always unfinished). She says he has no word in it, remembers him, with a stark-cold, emotionless voice, that this is her home and she is not breaking northerner traditions only because he is bothered by it. He mutters something around the impracticality of that reasoning during Winter, they can't feed the _world_ , they can't make the grains grow out of nowhere. She says he is being selfish. His voice changes to something condescending and cruel when he snaps back she is being _naïve_ and that's when her anger flares, right along with a sudden fear, a moment of lucidity when she is forced to acknowledge how much he has come to know her: his words are aimed at everything in her that is tender and sensitive, at the joints that sustain the weight of her whole soul. _Naïve_. Better call her a whore, better slap her in the face. _What did you just call me_ , she repeats, trying for furious and managing to sound, at best, defeated and fragile, and she hates him, for a second, but hates herself so much more for caring about what he thinks of her. How could he say that, he was _there_ when they ripped out her songs from her throat. He was on the _enemy's_ side, he _saw_ , he _knows_.

Later that night she wakes up from a nightmare and realizes she has slipped, unconsciously, into his arms during her sleep. Her rising is a mute, quiet thing, a mere tremble and her eyes startle open, hands closing in his tunic, trying to hold on to something, to ground herself. He shifts in his sleep and wakes up too; it is dark, but she knows how the rhythm of his breathing changes when he wakes. Her fingers unwind from his clothes and she starts to draw away from him in a silence that is both ashamed and resentful. "Don't," he asks, and holds her, not too strong, as she would have liked, just enough. She could have put up a fight, for her dignity's sake, but who are they fooling; in the dense darkness between them, her face easily finds that hollow space carved out for her under his jaw.

 _I should be angry with you,_ she thinks, _you are a terrible person._ But she is so cold.

"I didn't mean that," he whispers. (He never learnt how to properly apologize for anything, to say it, _I'm sorry_ , not when it matters.)

"Then why did you say it?" she asks, and it shouldn't be like this, a vulnerable thing curled against his side, but it is, she is.

"Because I was angry with you."

(He is shrewdly frank, sometimes, and she wishes he wasn't.) "And why were you angry with me?"

"Because you remind me too much of the person I wanted to be and will never be," he says in one tired breath. "Good and gentle and—" he swallows. "Not naïve. Not really."

"You are good and gentle to _me_ ," she says, and then regrets it, immediately. The echoes of a memory and the hint of some truth, something she does not dare to ask and he does not dare to confess, lingers between them, dances around them, and for a moment she thinks she should drag away from him, but can't. "You've been very tense lately," she murmurs. "What is wrong?"

"Nothing is wrong," he lies.

"I'm your wife, you should talk to me about—" it is her time to swallow. "About what troubles you."

He places the softest of the kisses on her brow. "I don't think you can help me, but thank you, my lady." His fingers are buried in her hair, then, and he slides them down, slowly. He is trying to put her to sleep again. Sansa tries to match this man with the man she knows during the day; people are funny, always shifting in different lights, or the absence of light altogether in this particular case. She feels the rush of something grasping at her heartstrings to the thought that this is a part of him that no one else has access to. One could even think that this part of him _belongs_ to her: in these terms, with all the corollaries and implied vows.

"I care about you," she says, only because she needs to say— _something_ , because all this silence is starting to become unbearable. His hand reaches that minimal area of exposed skin under her hair, in the back of her neck; he draws lazy circles on it. She feels sleep catching her, fights it. "It hurts me when you're hurt." (What a coward she is: to give a half-soothing truth when the raw side of it is a scream, almost: _I will loose you, won't I?_ ) "If there's anything I can do—"

"Sansa," he soughs, and her name sounds like a polite, careful, considerate warning. (Because the scope of it, _anything_. Anything: _take what you want from me_.) "You're very kind, but you can't fix everything."

"I'm not trying to fix you," she replies. "You're not broken." He sneers something that sounds like the dry half of a laughter, quietly. She hates the sound, gets up on her elbow to look down to him. His face is barely visible; he is only a shadow in the darkness. "You're _not_ ," she says. Too young, too fierce, too stubborn.

"Try to get some rest, my lady." He tries to pull her back to him. She palms his chest, trying to stop him.

"Tyrion—"

"We can make it work. We are going to give bread to the whole country if you want to," he says, and tugs at her waist again. She complies this time, resting her cheek against his chest once more.

"I wasn't thinking about this afternoon." Her fingers fidget and tickle. She wants to touch his face. She wants to ask him what is going on with them. She wants to ask him what does he wants from her. She wants to ask if he, too, can't stop thinking about that day, when he touched her in all the right places and lit up something in her that refuses to be extinguished, but she keeps quiet.

"I know you weren't," he sighs. "Sleep, Sansa."

(And Sansa considers that maybe, 

maybe, she is the one who is changed. Changing).

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


Sansa is happy beyond relief for Jon's presence; Rickon is more prone to listen to him, who knows the wildlings from both beyond and this side of the Wall, than anyone else. After they share the midday meal together, Sansa assembles Rickon, Jon, Tyrion and herself in her solar, to (at last) discuss the redistribution of the lands of the Gift, both Old and New: she, as Wardeness of the North and Lady Regent; Tyrion, because she likes his opinions when he gives them cautiously; Jon, as the Lord Commander of the Night's Watch; Rickon, as the future Lord of Winterfell, because he needs to learn.

They open an old map over her table and Sansa summarizes the overall situation to Jon: the clans who survived, the possible heirs who expect to be named lords and receive lands to farm, those of the free-folk who had agreed to bend the knee to the Queen-

"They didn't bend the knee to the Queen," Rickon cuts her out. Sansa raises her eyes to him, surprised with the sound of her little brother's voice. She had forgotten he was there. "They bent the knee to me."

"And you accepted it in the name of the Queen," Sansa reminds him, soberly, although Rickon was right. Most of the free folk were suspicious still of the Southern Throne; at best, some of them trusted the Starks because of Jon, but not all of them, and those who bent the knee did so with great suspicion, and one threat or two. "Because we are loyal to the Queen and we have served the Crown as Wardens for generations. We have talked about it, I'm sure you remember."

"I don't understand why _we_ have to decide who should inherit the land," Rickon says, sharply. "Just the four of us, behind closed doors. Shouldn't they be here? The free folk, the leaders of the clans, the heirs?"

Tyrion makes a face that says too well what he is thinking ( _that is a hell of a good point_ ), and she looks at him hoping he will listen to what she is thinking too ( _for the love of all the gods, not now_ ). He looks out to the window and keeps quiet; Sansa shares a worried look with Jon before she answers, as calmly as she is able, "They will be part of the... Discussion. Soon. But the Gift is not theirs yet. It belongs to Winterfell and to the Night's Watch, and it is our duty to manage it wisely and justly."

"Are we being just?" Rickon asks, almost innocent in his doubt, and Jon tries to suppress a laughter. He reclines on the back of his chair and crosses his arms before his chest, eyeing Rickon with something akin to pride blossoming from his surprise.

"I like your mind, boy," Jon says.

"I'm not a boy," Rickon says, bored.

"I'm sorry," Jon raises his palms. "You are right. I like your mind, my lord."

Sansa clutches her hands in her lap. Tyrion sits across her on the table, far from everyone; Jon by her left and Rickon by Jon's left. She sees with the corner of her eyes when her husband raises his eyebrows and nods, silently agreeing with Jon. "What do you suggest, then?" she asks, warily, to Rickon. "A _fair_ , just approach. How would it be?"

Rickon thinks, frowns, looks at the map for three seconds. "Let them fight. Let the winners have it."

Sansa sighs. Jon laughs, unbelieving. Tyrion doesn't laugh but he gets close. "Well," he says, sardonically. "A practical man, our lord-to-be, no one could ever deny it."

"War, Rickon?" Sansa asks. "Do you believe this is what the North needs? More war?"

"It wouldn't be a war. It would be a battle," Rickon explains. Sansa makes a mental note to praise him for the distinction later, but not now.

"Physical strength is not all," Sansa says. "You can't solve all the North's problems through battle and sheer use of brutal force."

"All _important_ problems are solved with brutal force," Rickon mutters.

"Your sister was two and ten when she married me," Tyrion says, his grave voice very solemn. "She survived most knights and warriors I've known."

Sansa's eyes search for her husband's face. She is not surprised, but she is thankful. For the first time since they entered her solar, Rickon spares his eyes to the little man in the corner of the table. "I know that," he says, cold as ice. Stark to the bone.

Tyrion shrugs. "As far as I know, she has never swung a sword in her life."

"Because she is a _lady_ ," Rickon says. "Ladies don't fight."

"Arya fights," Jon points out.

But Rickon is not looking at Sansa, or at Jon, for the matter. He is examining Tyrion with a curious expression, cocking his head to the side. "You survived too," he says, after his scrutiny. "Do you fight, my lord? Not in the back of a dragon, I mean."

"Rickon," Sansa warns. Tyrion only smiles, and she knows why. Rickon's wits hold more than a vague resemblance with her own and a little bit of Tyrion's too; she wonders if that should be worrying.

"When I have to," Tyrion answers, nonchalantly.

"The free-folk wouldn't believe you." The heir to Winterfell rests his back against his chair and says, with the same disinterested voice Tyrion tries to convey, "Among the wildlings, you would have been sacrificed on the day you were born."

" _Rickon_ ," it's Jon who warns this time, but Tyrion doesn't even wince.

There's a horrified silence with the way he says it - not as a wish, not as a threat, as nothing but a pure, simple fact.

"That's a cruel thing to say, Rickon," Sansa says, trying to hide under the table when her fingers start to tremble, because Rickon is not a cruel boy and that just makes everything worst. Her first instinct is to get up and drag Tyrion off the room. But his mask doesn't shift from its perfect position on his face: he is still half-smirking and looking into Rickon's eyes, somewhat gingerly. "Apologize."

"Let him be, wife. My lord is just being honest," her husband says, raising just a hand and then lowering it, his palm over the edge of the table; he speaks with the cold, unbreakable calm of a man who outlived all his enemies, and Sansa is suddenly once more reminded that he can be _dangerous_ , like all survivors can, like she is, sometimes. "But, oh, if I could have a golden dragon every time I'm told that."

"You are the richest man of Westeros already," Rickon says, simply. "You don't need any more golden dragons."

Tyrion quietly snorts to that and says nothing else.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


One night, in the darkness-

Her back is turned to him. She is awake and she knows that he knows. He has been keeping his distance from her most of the nights, and Sansa does not blame him. This is not her place.

But that night he runs his fingers across the notches of her spine under the blankets that cover them, from her neck to the small of her back, up, down, up, down, and the fabric of her gown brushes against her skin in all the places he touches her and she feels like crying. _Hold me_ , she wants to ask: he has never denied her, she knows, but she keeps waiting for him to make a move and he doesn't, doesn't. He never comes. _It has been four days since the last time you held me._

(She realizes she is _counting._ )

"Tyrion," she breathes.

He waits.

"Why did you ask me to stop you?"

It has been three weeks, since.

There is absolutely no way she would ask this looking into his eyes, in daylight.

His finger slides over the space between her shoulder-blades. And goes up. "Because I don't trust myself." His voice is honed and dark and deep, and she shivers. "You shouldn't, either."

She doesn't turn to him, eyes fixed in the chair in front of the window that stands some feet away from her side of the bed, the curtains waving as the winter wind rushes in. "What do you mean?"

"I mean-" He reaches her nape, stops. "Every man has a breaking point, and I know mine very well." His finger glides its way down again. "I made you a promise, I'm keeping it. Nothing has changed."

 _How can you say that_ , Sansa wonders. _Everything has changed_.

"That was very noble of you." It's three parts honesty and one part mockery, the kind of irony she learnt from him. She listens when grins.

"Noble?" he scoffs. "I like you better when you're not hating me. It wasn't very altruistic, I assure you, my lady."

She feels his finger reaching the middle of her back through her shift, his breathing close to her shoulders.

"You didn't kiss me." It isn't a question.

"I didn't."

( _Why?_ , she wants to ask, but doesn't.

Instead, she thinks, with a girlish despair-

 _something is wrong with me._ )

"Why did you ask me to close my eyes?"

His hand stops again. More silence. "I thought it would be easier for both of us."

"Did you close yours?"

He chortles. Dry and wicked. "Please, my lady. I didn't even blink. I'm not a fool."

She misses a breath. Drills her lungs to inhale again. It sounds ragged. He notices, and says her name, _Sansa-_ , as if to begin a confession, a plea, an explanation. And then his words die. 

"I'm no good man," he finally says.

"I know who you are," she murmurs. This time he doesn't try to dissuade her.

Sansa knows.

She knows, and yet-

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


Jon, Daenerys and Tyrion behave oddly in each other's presence. She had seen them all together in the same room just once, and as she observes Jon and Tyrion during the feast, she can't help but be disturbed by the way they orientate themselves.

They talk low, heads almost touching, but they don't look _at_ each other. They watch the hall, instead: restless eyes, ready for some battle to burst out from anywhere, like soldiers who never learned how not to fight. (Jon has always been like that, but this is a side of Tyrion that stays hidden.) Jon stares at his ale, half-smiling, looks around; his lips barely move when he mutters something that makes Tyrion laugh under his breath, behind his cup of wine. They touch, too, the subtle, queer kind of touch you can only share with someone you have been to War with: his hand on Jon's elbow when he comes closer to whisper some warning in her brother's ear; their arms comfortably brushing when they are side by side; the way Jon straightens his shoulders and inclines his body forward, slightly, shielding them both, or his hand goes subtly to his belt, to the ghost of a sword, whenever someone comes too near them, even harmless people. She remembers the way Daenerys and Jon managed to orbit around each other even in opposite spots in a hall full of people, Jon always looking for the her eyes just to reassure himself she was there and safe and Daenerys making sure she would never walk too far from his careful watch; Tyrion was different, he didn't look directly _at_ Daenerys, but to every man and woman looking at her, trying to read their intentions, their movements, possible threats to the Queen, somehow managing to warn Jon with a tilt of his head before they could get to her.

Sansa's place is by her husband's side but she hesitates, feeling like she is interrupting some weird kind of intimate moment. Something in Tyrion _shines_ in Jon's presence, although she can't quite put her finger on it. It makes her jealous; of which one of them she is not sure. All that she seems able to bring out from Tyrion is a weary kind of longing; he never shines by her side. She wonders what she is doing wrong, but then again, she _knows_ what she is doing wrong, or rather not doing. 

She just doesn't know what does it say about _Jon_.

She finally sits on the empty chair by Tyrion's side just in the moment a servant comes closer between the half-drunk-dancing bodies on the Great Hall to fill up their empty cups. "Wine or ale, m'lord?" she asks Jon.

"Ale, thank you," he says, and Sansa sees when he reaches to the flagon himself, but the girl fills up his mug before he can take it. Jon doesn't like to be served. Sansa thinks he will never get used to it.

"Wine for you, m'lord?" the servant asks Tyrion, but Sansa covers his cup with her hand before he can confirm it or the girl can do her job.

"He had enough wine for tonight," Sansa says with a small, polite smile, and the poor girl peeks at Tyrion as if she is waiting for him to contradict her and make her night miserable.

He just sighs. "Of course. I'm good, thank you."

Jon watches the scene as if Sansa had just grown a third arm as the servant leaves to serve other tables. "What just happened?"

"My lady wife is of the opinion that I drink too much," Tyrion explains. He doesn't sound very happy with her. "Apparently, it ruins my mood."

"Because it does, but why are you complying?"

"Jon?" Sansa calls out, as if to remind him she is there, listening. "A little bit of loyalty would be appreciated."

"She is my host. I'm obliged to the rules of the house," Tyrion states. Sansa touches his arm and he intertwines their fingers out of pure habit, as he always does in public events like feasts, even if it's just a feast to celebrate the fact that Jon is home and no one is truly watching because at this point everybody is drunk. 

"Oh, you must miss the West," Jon laughs.

"Terribly," Tyrion nods. "Since the West misses me just as much, soon I'll be back home, and no one, not even your sister, will keep me from my wine."

Sansa catches his eye. He looks at her for half of a second, but it's enough to see the confusion in her face and then he looks away.

She doesn't like this talk of _host_ and the West, no more than she likes the distance that has been growing between them. Little by little. Like one inch per night so neither of them truly noticed.

Like the Thing Left Hanging is finally being cut out.

 _What did you expect_ , she muses, bitterly, to herself, the music in the hall and the conversation between Tyrion and Jon only a vague, shapeless sound in the background of her mind. Every man has needs. She can't keep him from his rights as a husband _forever_ , no one is _that_ kind. Tommem remains in the Rock as Tommem _Waters_ , not Lannister, and Myrcella is nowhere to be found, probably dead. House Lannister needs heirs just as House Stark, and Sansa keeps wondering why did he accept to come North with her knowing this.

And then she thinks about how would it be, to sleep in a empty bed. She thinks about the glass gardens he rebuilt for her, where he spends so much of his time, not because he likes gardening but because, she knows, he misses the heat. The Broken Tower, where he hides when he needs to be alone or to cry, and that he thinks no one knows but she does. And she thinks about her chambers, so big and so cold, and remembers quiet nights spent reading or talking with the boundaries of his body nearby as a part of the inventory of Winterfell. She thinks about a rising sun and a starlit sky and how he could have looked at it all, but instead he chose to stare at her. She thinks about how it feels to fall asleep to the sound of his heartbeat.

Her fingers let go of his. "My lady?" her husband asks, eyeing her with worry. "Are you feeling well?"

She works a smile as well as she is able. "Actually I'm not, my lord. I think I'm retiring to bed, if you wouldn't mind. It's late."

"Is there anything you need, Sansa?" Jon asks, worried, and reaches out for her hand.

"No. I just need to rest," she tries to reassure him, taking his hand in hers and kissing it, remembering the conversation they had early that day. She wishes she could drag Jon away for herself, because there are things that no one else understands but him, but that would be selfish. Everybody misses him, and she doesn't want to deprive her family from his presence; soon he will leave again. "Keep an eye on Rickon for me, both of you."

"Do you want me to come with you?" Tyrion asks, still suspiciously studying her face. As if he knew she wouldn't fall asleep without him. _And yet, you want to leave_.

"No," she says, and kisses his cheek. "Should I wait for _you_?" she asks, looking subtly to Jon.

"Maybe not. You said you needed to rest."

She nods, and looks at the two men left in her life, the way Tyrion leans towards Jon as soon as she gets up. And then she turns around and leaves.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


(The Conversation Jon And Sansa Had Earlier That Day happened as follows:

A couple of hours before the feast, while all the household prepares the Great Hall and the food, Sansa hides in one of the dozen small storerooms, closes the door behind herself and takes a deep breath, her back pressed against the wood, among barrels of food. Everyone asks three questions at once, about the menu and the disposal of the tables and the turns of the guards, and really, it's just a special dinner because she wants Jon to feel at home, and because the Night's Watch deserves the prestige they've gained after the War. No great lords or royals are in the house and this shouldn't be so stressful and she just needs a second to-

breathe.

Feasts were funnier when she was a child and she didn't have to worry about every detail.

Someone knocks on the door and she wants to scream. "In a moment!," she says, it sounds angrier than it should, she doesn't care.

The person behind the door laughs it off. "It's just _me,_ Sansa," says the voice, Jon's voice, and as soon as she recognizes it, she opens the door, pulls him inside and closes it again.

There is little space for them and he stands before her, leaning against a cask full of something that she suspects to be lentil, and smiling, amused. She smiles in return. "I'm sorry. I just needed-"

"I know," he says, because Jon usually knows these things.

"I'm so glad you are here," she says, then. She means _in Winterfell_ but also _locked with me in a random storeroom._

"I'm glad to see you, too." He reaches out one arm, and in the confined, narrow space of the room, he doesn't need much more than one arm to bring her near. She allows him, and rests one cheek on his shoulder, even if she is one inch taller than him, maybe two. Her whole body seems to breathe, muscles and mind and all. "There you go."

"Thank you," she says, still not lifting her head. "Where is Rickon?"

"Tyrion is taking care of him," Jon says. "But it's not like he needs to be watched over all the time. He is not a child anymore. You need to relax."

"Everyone keeps saying that," she mutters.

"That you need to relax?" he asks, audibly smiling. She rolls her eyes.

"That he is not a child."

"Because he is not."

"I can't see him that way."

"How old were you when-"

"It's _different_ , Jon." She had Rickon's age when she left Winterfell, eleven, and they both know it.

"It's not that different." He pushes her away just enough to look at her face, but doesn't let go of her; she is grateful for it. "He seems to be very fond of Tyrion."

She pulls a face. "It took them some time and a lot of hard work."

"That's understandable. He is not easy to love," Jon agrees.

She knows. Oh gods, she knows.

"He is not," she bites her lower lip, and then looks down, because a part of her feels that this conversation is the reason why he followed after her, to begin with.

"Sansa," he says, very gently and she doesn't want to look him in the eye.

Because Jon's eyes are Ned's eyes, and what would her father say to her if he could see her now, married to a Lannister because she chose to?

Not only married to a Lannister but, almost-

"You are disappointed in me," she begins.

"I'm not disappointed." He frowns, as if she just said some absurd thing, and studies her face carefully, worryingly. "But I would be lying if I said I was not surprised when he wrote to me about you." She nods. "Sansa. Look at me." She takes a deep breath again and looks at him. "Talk to me. Please."

And this is the problem:

When Sansa swung the blade that cut Petyr's throat, she knew, that kind of knowledge that sinks into your bones: _I will never be happy again._ It's not that she thought she would be a sad thing, crying all the time, or that she would never be able to accomplish anything ever again. What Sansa knows is that she is broken, they broke her, and she won't ever be the same girl she was before. She will ever be marked by this pain. And time has passed and nothing will ever be _pure_ , joy won't be _pure_ again, everything will be stained with the absence of Ned and Catelyn and Robb and even Bran, and Petyr, too, and everyone and everything that happened.

And Sansa accepted her fate with the grace that only the oldest daughter of Catelyn Tully could ever deliver.

But-

"He is kind to me," she begins. "He is good for the kids. He helps me to keep everything in order."

Jon only nods.

_He kisses my forehead when he thinks I'm asleep. He calls me darling. He holds me every night. He is growing flowers for me._

That sounds too intimate, only hers and her husband's concern, and so she doesn't say it.

"I think I might love him, eventually," she says, so carefully as if she is trying not to cut herself with a broken mirror. "I don't know if I can love like that again, but I could... Learn. I could try."

"That's a very good thing," Jon says, still as kind as ever.

"And I think I have..." the word is almost impossible to say out loud. "Hope?"

"That's good, too, Sansa. There is nothing wrong with it."

"Jon." She needs to know this from him and him alone. "Do you think people like us-," her hand is palmed against his chest where she knows there is a scar, right above his heart, where they tried to break him. "Do you think we will ever be happy?"

People like them, or Arya and Tyrion, or even Gendry, and Daenerys. Happy in that carefree, yellow-bright, summer, full-of-dreams way.

Jon Snow smiles to her. "No, Sansa," he says, and she loves him because of that, because he understands what she is asking and because he never lies. "Not how we used to be, but I think we can be whole, and that is just as good.")

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Oh, yes, this is still a very much Sansa/Tyrion fanfic but I couldn't help myself with the Tyrion/Jon thing, and the kind-of-platonic Jon/Sansa thing? It's just bigger than me, sorry not sorry, I told you from go that this fanfic is just self-indulgency)


	13. i couldn't whisper, when you needed it shouted

 

> I swear, I end up feeling empty, like you’ve taken something out of me, and I have to search  
>  my body for the scars, thinking  
>  _Did he find that one last tender place to sink his teeth in?_ I know you want me to say it,  
>  it’s in the script, you want me to say _Lie down on the bed, you’re all I ever wanted_  
>  _and worth dying for too_  
>  but I think I’d rather keep the bullet this time. It’s mine, you can’t have it, see,  
>  I’m not giving it up. This way you still owe me, and that’s  
>  as good as anything.
> 
> "Wishbone," Richard Siken

  
  
  
Tyrion and Jon watch Sansa leaving and Tyrion is determined to _not_ to be the one who speaks first.

It's the first time since Jon's arrival that they are alone, or as alone as they could be in a Hall full of people. Arya and Gendry dance and sing with the masons, some weird, northerner style, very different from the mannerly dances at the court. Most of the tables around them are empty and Tyrion looks at Jon, waiting.

"Your _host_ ," Jon says, finally, echoing his previous words with a color of skepticism to them.

Oh, so this is where they are starting. Tyrion sighs in annoyance. "Could we just don't do that? Please."

"She is my sister, so I'm afraid we need to," Jon rebukes.

"Then speak what you must, Jon. The whole North threatened me already. It would be unfair to deprive you, of all people, of the chance–"

"Hurt her and I will be forced to hurt you," he interrupts, not coldly but not joking. "Really bad and permanently. Not even Daenerys will be able to stop me."

"There we go," Tyrion japes, and misses his wine. "Objective and honest as usual! This is why I love you." Jon gazes at him, tries to hold back a smile, but just like Dany he is terrible at it. "Don't try, pretty boy. I'm a married man now. I'm not falling for your charms again. And don't you have vows in the Night’s Watch, anyway? There is no respect to tradition in this country anymore."

Jon laughs and takes a gulp of his ale. "My vows concern only women," he reminds Tyrion.

"Sure. How is Val?"

Jon rolls his eyes. "Val is well. And you were already married before," he points out, unbreakable, unreachable. "Technically."

"Technically," Tyrion replies, "my wife didn't care."

Jon raises one inquisitive, intrusive eyebrow. "And does she care now?"

"That–" Tyrion begins. Stops. Thinks it through. Sighs. "That is a good question, Lord Snow," he finishes, the cursed nickname rolling of his tongue gently. Jon does not mind. Not from him.

"Are you happy?" he asks, after some time, eyes crossing the Great Hall.

Isn't that the main _point_ for them. _Nothing is ever enough for you_ , Jon said to him, once, in one of the countless fights between the two of them and Dany.

Tyrion smirks. "You know me, Jon. I'm never happy."

Jon smiles back and shakes his head in a fond acceptance of his person, knowingly and tired and beautiful. Tyrion has missed this smile. He tries not to stare. People talk, people have been talking the whole day, and as much as it is fun to hear the absurd gossip surrounding the two dragonlords, Tyrion doesn't want to upset Sansa. He also fears some of the gossip will get it right.

"You smile like her," he murmurs, fixing his eyes on the Hall too. He notices with the corner of his eye when Jon tilts his head to the side and frowns one eyebrow. "Like Sansa. You two are so much alike," he sighs, wondering if that is the reason why he can't help to fall for them both in a way. Not like a song, but a real and visceral kind of protection, like he would grow out of his skin, out of his usually selfish inclinations, if it meant to keep them smiling, weary smiles as they were. He is not like that. He does not risk his skin, nor his heart, for other people's happiness- but then, if the War couldn't change people, nothing else could. And he, truly and in fact, almost died in said War.

There is just _something_ about broken Starks that brings Tyrion to his knees. He is in awe of them. He envies them and he probably loves them.

"I'm nothing like Sansa," Jon says. His innocence makes Tyrion grin.

"I don't mean physically."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean you are both too kind and too tired and too smart in a very specific, Stark way."

"I'm not a Stark," Jon says, like a fucking mantra. Tyrion rolls his eyes. Horseshit. No one has ever been more of a Stark. "But I'll take it as a compliment. Sansa is a wonderful lady and I hope you know how lucky you are."

Oh, but that is another thing coming from Jon's mouth, the man who almost married Sansa, who would be in Tyrion's place if Daenerys could have her way: a safe way to secure the wild North, marrying a Targaryen to a Stark, the Queen had thought, as much as it pained her to give Jon away. For better or for worse, both Jon and Sansa refused the proposal. _We are Starks_ , Sansa had said, _we don't marry among siblings,_ and Daenerys had smiled smartly to her. _Jon is not a Stark, lady Sansa. Jon is a Targaryen, and we Targaryens do it all the time._ But it was to no avail. Sansa insisted upon considering Jon her brother, recent bloodlines be damned, although, Tyrion suspected, she has always been _too_ comfortable around Jon to be completely repelled by the idea of marrying him. It was Jon, honorable, stubborn Jon, the one impossible to convince. He would take no wife - not his pretty sister-cousin, not his white-haired Queen, who asked, _begged_ for him to rule by her side. _I'm a man of the Night's Watch_ , etc, etc.

 _If Jon wants to freeze his balls in that place and spend the rest of his life deprived of sex and warmth, let him, Dany. A man must be free to choose his own hell_ , Tyrion had said to her, later. _He loves you and you know it, isn't that enough?_ It wasn't. Tyrion knew it well enough. Dany ignored him, the pain of Jon's rejection still tender and sensitive, but that night she'd let Tyrion take care of her all the same, a rare and appreciated gesture. It was usually the opposite.

Now, all things considered, Tyrion ponders if the best answer would be a heartfelt vow to protect his lady wife, a bitter remark about being constantly reminded of how lucky and undeserving of her he is, or a jape. He chooses the safe way. "You wound me, Jon," he japes, hand over his heart, feigning offense. "I'm the former Hand of the Queen, the richest man in the Seven Kingdoms. I rode a _dragon_. I'm an excellent match."

Jon pulls a face. "I don't doubt your credentials."

"But?" Tyrion offers. Jon holds his silence. "Are you worried about her?"

"I'm always worried about her," Jon murmurs. "But I worry about you as well. It is hard for a southerner to live so far up North."

 _Your sister keeps me warm_ , he thinks about stating, a simple and deeper truth that it first seemed, but Tyrion holds his tongue. He is not delusional. Jon loves Tyrion but he loves Sansa so much more, and Jon is twice his size. Literally. "You shouldn't. I am just fine. The greenhouse works fine for me," he says, dismissively. "And Sansa knows how to take care of herself. She survived taller men than me," he half-grins, infamous as ever. "If anything, I should be afraid of her, not the contrary. You should fear her too."

Jon laughs. "Sansa wouldn't hurt you," he says, kindly. It goes implicit that she wouldn't hurt Jon as well, too obvious to be spoken out loud. "She spoke fondly of you."

He ignores the last words; he can't allow himself to get his hopes up, not after these last weeks, and the way the rift between him and his wife had been growing, as if it weren't wide enough. "I don't believe she would hurt me, either, but to make sure I would keep an eye open."

"You two make an odd, good...," Jon seems to fight with the words, and settles for- "alliance."

"Don't we," Tyrion grins sardonically once again. "Dany let go of _me_! And I'm her favorite, as you know."

Jon's face slowly falls. He swirls the mug in his hands, watches with interest as the liquid inside transforms into a mini amber tornado. Tyrion is absolutely sure he is not actually seeing the beer. "How is she?" he finally asks.

There's a specific expression in Jon's features, a melancholy in his otherwise hard tone, that is only there when he is thinking of Daenerys.

"I haven't seen her more than you in the past year," Tyrion says, trying to be gentle. "Don't you write to her?" Jon's silence is guilty as blood dripping from a sword. "Fuck. _Write_ to her, Jon. I'm not playing messenger boy again."

His eyes are still firm on the ale, voice plain and flat. "I'm not asking for you to."

"I've said it already but it bears repeating: you are idiots. The two of you."

"Thank you, Tyrion."

"But, since you've asked," Tyrion says, and only then Jon raises his eyes. He tenders his voice again. "You really should visit, or write something. She needs you. She needs a friend. Any friend."

Jon nods, guilt still painting his eyes darker, and finishes his ale. "Aye. Who doesn't?"

Tyrion chortles, tiredly. If he and Sansa were able to eventually overcome his murderous family, Jon and Daenerys surely could get past their problems. They saved the world together. That must count for something.

"I'm glad to see you again," Tyrion confesses, not looking into his friend's eye. "You look more alive than you did before. It’s a relief, really."

"You are very much alive too," Jon smiles to him.

"I am," Tyrion shrugs. "Who would have thought?"

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
It is almost morning when he retires to his chambers, he and Jon the last ones to leave the Great Hall, and Tyrion tries to be as quiet as possible when he opens the door and enters the room.

Sansa is lying down on her belly, in the middle of the mattress, and there's one single candle's fire burning low on the nightstand by her side. She is still dressed in the same gown she wore at the feast, although her shoes are placed on the ground next to the door, and her cloak is hanging on the head of the wolf carved out in wood at the post of the bed. She breathes deep and slow in her sleep, but even so he hides behind the screen at the corner to change his clothes and put his tunic on, mostly for habit. When he climbs in the bed and approaches her, carefully, he sees her cheek resting over a book, one single drop of slobber in the corner of her mouth that makes him smile to himself. He tries to take the book from underneath her without waking her up and fails. She blinks her eyes open, confused and blue like anything he has ever seen in his life, and raises her head, looking around as if trying to remember where she is.

"Just me," he murmurs low, still trying not to disturb her. "Come back to sleep."

But her eyes, once the initial confusion is gone, are lucid. "I was just... Napping."

She wipes her mouth with the tip of a blanket that is only half-thrown over her body; he takes the book from her hand. It is one of his, he realizes as he closes it and puts it on the nightstand by his side of the bed. "Too boring?" he asks, faintly amused.

"I was waiting for you, but you didn't come," she explains, and rests her head on the pillow, curling herself up on her side. "What time is it?"

"Almost dawn," he answers, and lies down by her side. "I told you not to wait."

"I wanted to," she replies, and takes his hand. He lets her, watches as she toys with each one of his fingers with great interest. It makes him smile again.

"Is everything all right?" His wife nods in silence, tracing the lines scratched deep into his palms, but there's that little frown of tension between her eyebrows. Besides, she has spent too much time with Arya, because now she bites her lower lip whenever she is thinking too hard. "Hey. Sansa?"

She looks up, into his eyes, then. Her face doesn't quite thaw but at least her resolve into silence does. "I want to ask you something."

"Ask me."

"I didn't know you still planned to leave to the West."

 _Well_.

Her face is bland then, and it shows nothing. It is a part of her that he knows she only uses when she needs to play, and he doesn't like it here, in their bed. "That is not a question," he says.

"And that is not an answer," she replies, courteously, but lets go of his hand.

He also doesn't like to be left speechless. Two can play this game. "I am the rightful Lord of Casterly Rock and Warden of the West," he says. _That's an answer_ , he thinks with himself, and then wonders if it truly is, after all. "I can't spend my whole life here."

She swallows down something. He can't help but ask himself what: an explanation, or maybe just pride. "When?"

There are a hundred ways to give her the answer she wants. His first instinct is to say that he should have left, really, a lot of time ago. He shouldn't have let things grow into what they have grown. He should say that he has been trying to leave for so long that it doesn't make sense anymore. He would show her all the letters of his Aunt Genna, writing about his lands and with not-so-subtle remarks about his absence and, most importantly, the absence of an heir, but he always burns his letters after he answers them and there is no physical register of it, of all the things he is failing at. And he wants to say it to her. That just like in King's Landing, everyone here knows that this marriage of theirs is just an odd kind of shield they have found against all the demands and responsibilities, like they were children. He wants to say it, that it was irresponsible of her to ask to remain married with him, and it was irresponsible of him to have accepted it, because they have _duties_ and they are seeing to none. It is a good alliance, but not the best it could be, and here they are, neither leaving for good and neither truly staying. Of course she doesn't want to leave her home behind; Tyrion stood no chance against _Winterfell_ , against Arya and Rickon, against ruling the North. He wants to say that he has always been ready to give her that damn annulment. That he still is right now, and he would if she asked, but she insists on not asking. And that she is cruel, because no one forced her this time. And that he doesn't know what he is doing here, except he is not completely sure he wants to leave her, now, and that this, this is her fault, too, because now her scent actually clings to him the whole morning, and how is he supposed to leave? He wants to tell her that he is too old for this, too old and too tired. Gods, he should have left when he had the chance and the nerve.

Instead:

"I don't know. Eventually," he says, and for some reason can't meet her eye.

"I can't leave now," she says, and her voice is so small that he has to come closer, just one inch. "Rickon is barely eleven. He needs me, he needs family, at least until-"

"I know that," he says, as gently as he is able at the moment, which is not much. "I'm not asking for you to come with me. I know Winterfell needs you."

She stares at him, then, with disappointement. It reminds him so much of Cersei, like she was expecting he would fail at something. He is just not sure about what is it, exactly, he is failing at. "Without me," she says, nodding only once, slowly, and retreating, drawing back as if his proximity is paining her. "You are planning to leave without me. Just as I’ve assumed."

"We can remain married," he hurries to explain. "We've done this before”. And it happens all the time, couples living miles apart. His own father lived in King’s Landing while his mother stayed at the Rock, before he came into the world and killed her. "You will be safe. And the children too, Arya and Rickon," he reassures her, knowing very well this is always Sansa's first priority. "Daenerys wouldn't force you to marry against your will."

"Yes, she would," she says, and lies down on her back, staring at the ceiling. She sounds angry, defeated. "You have romantic notions about Daenerys and I don’t judge you for that, but if she thinks this alliance is not strong enough then yes, she would. She _should_. A good Queen should”.

“You are mine”, he states, with finality. His head is starting to ache. "At least from this I can protect you. You shouldn’t worry”. 

She looks to the side, to his face, and her frustration is starting to look like a mix of sadness and confusion. He is feeling a little confused himself, because he is not sure about where this conversation is heading.

It’s not a good moment to be out of his depth. _Again._ The sun is almost rising and he can’t remember how exactly they ended up discussing Daeneyrs hard-won peace and alliances through the Seven Kingdoms and gods, he is so, so tired. Of it all.

But Sansa just studies his face, eyes narrowing as she thinks something over. “I don’t understand”, she says, and he doesn’t know if she is talking with him or with herself. He favors the latter.

“What is there to understand?”

"What do you _want_?" 

He almost laughs at that, all bitter and sour, but holds himself back. _You know what I want._ Because she is not a friend – who _does that_ , for all the _gods_? Who holds their friends in the dark every night, who knows the names they whisper when they dream, who _touches their friends like that_? She is no proper ally – their alliance grants him nothing, not an heir, not gold, not lands, nothing he didn't have without her, and she is no proper wife, either; he vows over and over he won't touch her and she _thanks_ him, she is _nothing_ , this is just a ghost of a marriage and yet, he has spent the last year following her form like a compass following the North, like a, like a–

"Does it matter what I want?" he says, then, because he can't not say it. The question has been chocking him for years, since she refused to kneel for him, since she asked him to come to the North, since Tysha, and he knows he sounds angrier than he should.

She still not cowers before his own self-deprecation, as usual; her voice becomes something urgent, her face assuming an iron determination. "I'll give you children, if this is what you want," she says, and the words are so incongruous and absurd that he keeps not understanding; he can only identify the edges of the words, the way she tries to make them neat, to steady her voice, how she tries not to tremble. She fails. "I can give you an heir. I know I've been... Neglectful. Of my duties as your wife. You’ve been very patient to me from the start, and I might have–"

"Wait– no. Sansa? No." Once he understands what she is offering, he realizes that there are two parallels conversations happening here. Of course she wouldn't think he is _asking_ – "I don't want anything from you, not like that."

And then a flicker of realization crosses her face, her eyes changing from anguished to weary as she sighs. It softens her, somehow. "Oh gods," she mutters. "Do you have any idea of what I'm trying to say? For a man so clever you can be surprisingly oblivious sometimes."

Her voice is sharp enough to cut his pride just in the right joint. "Clearly I don't," he answers, defensively. "If you wouldn't care to _enlighten_ me–"

"I'm asking for you to stay with me, Tyrion" she says, so soft but so _fierce_ , and suddenly there is not enough air in the room. "For me. Not because of the queen, or the Seven Kingdoms, or anything else."

... Oh.

He hears his heart bumping in his ears, as if his body knows her words before his brain. Sansa glares at him, waiting for an answer.

"To stay," he repeats, trying to help himself to _think_. It doesn’t work as planned. "You mean– in the North."

"I mean _with me_. Wherever the damned place, the North or the West or Essos or the end of the world."

He studies her face, and his mind is a white blank page as he tries to make a list of the possible reasons why she would–

Tyrion does not dare to assume.

"Why?" he asks; it is the only word that occurs to him.

"Why? What kind of _question_ is that? Because you are my husband, that is why," she says, and her voice ignites and burns as she speaks. It is anger but also despair. She looks anywhere but at him. "How can you do that? We shouldn't make plans and decisions without at least consulting each other, and- Every night we–" and she closes her eyes, stops abruptly her speech and shakes her head. Her frustration is almost palpable, solid. "It doesn't matter”.

"It does matter," he murmurs. The fact that he can't control his own maddening heartbeat strikes him as immeasurably annoying.

"It doesn’t, what matters is that we are married. We can't leave again, we left before and then–," she throws one hand in the air, sighs, takes another breath. She seems unable to finish a sentence, which makes him feel oddly less lonely. "I know this is not an ideal marriage to you."

"Sansa... Don't. Don't do that," he asks, because if she continues to say these things it is possible he will believe her and it will break him. And he has no more pieces left to break. 

She has to be, at least, merciful.

But she isn't: "No," she declares and finally looks him in the eye. He does not know if it's better or worse. Probably worse, because he can't think if he can't breathe appropriately. She looks into his yes and his lungs feel useless. " _You_ don't do that. Don’t be a coward, Tyrion. It is _impossible_ you didn’t see it coming, you can't be _that_ blind, and still you would leave me, even after– After–," and she doesn’t finish, again, she just covers her face with both of her hands and it feels like he is bleeding inside. Already.

"My lady." He touches the back of her hand. She keeps hiding from him, and this silence, it seems important. He dares to come closer to her, knowing she can feel it; props himself on his elbow and asks, begs, almost, "Please."

"You _touched_ me." Her voice is muffled against the palm of her hand but he listens to every word. He would not miss them. He could not even if he wanted. "You can't... You can't do that. You can’t touch me like that and then leave me, a good husband would never do that." Both of her hands slide off from her face and he can, at last, look in her eyes again. His wife. His flawless, beautiful, brave _wife_. She is not crying, but her words shake when she speaks. "Say something, please."

He stares at her for a very long moment. Thinks about duties and debts and about lies and honor and want.

But most of all, he remembers one of a thousand conversations before they fell asleep: _all hearts beat the same, I think. It is one of my favorite sounds in the world_ , she had said. _A beating heart._

"Don't lie to me, Sansa," he asks, after all, and his voice does that Lannister thing of camouflage his fear with a color of fierceness. But maybe his eyes show it, how _absurdly_ afraid he is, because next thing he knows, she is reaching out to him, her hand skidding down his neck until she finds the line of his tunic and pulls him impossibly closer. She turns to the side just in time, enough to press her chest against his, and he _gasps_.

"I'm not lying," she whispers, so soft and so kind and he lets himself believe in her, stops thinking. It's all instinct, now: when he allows her to circle one arm around him like she is trying to tie him to her for good, when he puts her hair behind her ear and then lets the hand rest in there, in the soft, unknown skin under her ear, wrapping the back of her head; when her hand finds his face and forces him to keep looking at her, inviting him to test her truth, to verify her words right there in the source. And he does. He searches in her eyes for repulsion or pity or lies and finds none. He doesn’t find a burning passion or desire, either. He sees mostly just stubbornness. "I'm not lying, I promise," she says, and cups his cheek. He leans into the touch because, let's assume for a moment that he is indeed dreaming, as it feels: what could go wrong? Absolutely nothing. "Don't go back to the West just yet, can you do that?" she murmurs and they have come so near that her lips almost brush against his when she speaks, and he sighs just with the anticipation, the promise of it. Gods he is tired of trying not to kiss her. All the time. All the damn time. And so, as the first signs of the morning begin to stretch its rays into the room, he nods and says _all right, I won't_. "Give me some years and I will go to the West with you. I will find Rickon a bride, I will see to Winterfell reconstruction and then I'll come with you. We are so young, and the war is over, there is no need to hurry," and she barely breathes between her words, as if he needed to be _convinced_. "I know I'm asking a lot of you, I'm asking for time, for years, and I know you hate the snow, and that the cold hurts your bones, but maybe– maybe if you stay we can–"

He shushes her; soothes her hair, chuckles a little. This woman. He can't believe her sometimes. "Whatever you want, my lady." It is that simple. It has always been that simple. He closes his eyes. Her hand is still there on his face, her arms still around him, the usual coldness of the air mitigated by the heat of her body: there's a real chance he might be awake. "I want whatever you want." 

He feels the hand on his cheek shyly travelling through his skin, his neck, until it reaches the base of his head and she lands there, a timid touch asking for permission. "Keep your eyes closed," she whispers.

Tyrion doesn't think he could be ready for her, eyes open or not. And so he waits, merely, until he can feel the pressure of her mouth against his. There is nothing confident about it, about her halting movements, her fingers fidgeting in his hair; in the first moment it's just the lightest of the touches, she's barely there, still and smooth. He keeps waiting, feeling her, _feeling her_ – his hand finds her face, and he discovers the trace of her jaw-line with his fingertips. Just then her lips finally move beneath his own, careful, hesitant, glorious. Like breathing and drowning at once. He slides the tip of his tongue along her lower lip just to taste it, and she sighs deliciously against his mouth but that is it: neither of them try to deepen the kiss, they let it linger softly. They are both sleepy and tired and for now there's no need of anything else, no need to rush. When she breaks apart he opens his eyes again and she smiles, small and lazy like a winter morning, but warm, always warm. He could swear he feels her smile under his skin. It makes some old fracture of his heart heal immediately.

"You look surprised," she says. He traces a invisible line from her cheek to her lips, just because he is not ready to stop touching her yet, and also because he wishes she would kiss him again.

"I _am_ surprised," he shrugs. "You can be hard to read, lady Stark."

"Not that hard." She studies his face, fondly, closely, and just then brings the blankets up to cover them both, settling herself to the curve of his body just like she's done a thousand times in the last months. He holds her close, and wonders why it feels new. Maybe it's just the morning air. "You still haven't said it," she murmurs against his chest.

He looks down at her face, frowning. "I haven't said it?"

"That you are going to stay with me."

He almost laughs. "Do you _honestly_ believe I would leave now?"

She giggles a little, and her arms wrap around his torso one inch tighter. "I actually don't, but I would like to hear it, anyway."

He kisses the crown of her hair. Thinks, for half a second, that he is the luckiest man alive. The luckiest. "I am going to stay with you, for as long as you want me."

(There's a vow, and there's a kiss.

It's way better than the first time.)

"Good." She closes her eyes and rests her cheek against the left side of his chest. He wonders what she will find there today, in his rib-cage. For the first time he is not afraid of what she will listen in his heart. "Can we sleep now? I'm exhausted. You kept me waiting for quite a while."

He is too happy to make some bitter remark about which one of them is more likely to leave the other waiting, too happy to sleep, too happy to leave the bed. He watches as she falls asleep, his fingers running through her hair, her face finally serene, her breathing even and silent. By the time he falls asleep too, the room is completely filled with the morning light.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- remember when I told you I didn't think about political plots? this is why things don't make sense in here. GO WITH IT PEOPLE we are just here for the fluff and angst  
> \- Tyrion is such a bissexual. Don't tell me he wouldn't fall for a dark-haired broken beauty like Jon, all right? It is my fanfic and I will indulge in my crack-ships, leave me alone!!!!11  
> \- (But to reassure you: nothing to worry about the two of them, water under the bridge, everyone is past it and hey, look, Sansa kind of wants Tyrion ~plays "she loves you" by beatles)  
> \- no joke: how will I keep writing angst and torturing you guys now? I'm having a crisis


	14. he that would eat of love must eat it where it hangs

> Never, never may the fruit be plucked from the bough  
>  And gathered into barrels.  
>  He that would eat of love must eat it where it hangs.  
>  Though the branches bend like reeds,  
>  Though the ripe fruit splash in the grass or wrinkle on the tree,  
>  He that would eat of love may bear away with him  
>  Only what his belly can hold,  
>  Nothing in the apron,  
>  Nothing in the pockets.  
>  Never, never may the fruit be gathered from the bough  
>  And harvested in barrels.  
>  The winter of love is a cellar of empty bins,  
>  In an orchard soft with rot.
> 
> "Never May the Fruit Be Picked," by Edna St. Vincent Millay

  
  
  
  


History says that the original Winterfell was built by Brandon the Builder, and as if he weren't a mythical figure himself, he was aided by giants. Different generations of Starks, in different eras, contributed to make of Winterfell what it used to be. For Sansa, Winterfell grows like trees among the snow, a forest made of stone and iron and hard work, but not of feasts and laughter like before. It is quiet and fruitful and sacred as the godswood, and it can be warm, but it carries the marks of war even as it is made anew. She tries to be as faithful to the original project as she can, both from memory and from register; it is a kind of obsession, sometimes, to make everything as it was before. She knows she is failing. 

It doesn't quite feel like the home she knew in her childhood. Every corner screams absences, silences; to keep herself practical, Sansa divides her mission in small tasks, and these in smaller ones. _Fix the Great Hall: Sew new banners for the walls (buy threads, needles and dyes in Winter Town). Crop oaks (find more joiners). Buy iron (talk to Gendry). Feed the household: send out hunters. Calculate the salt and honey needed to keep the meat conserved-_

She has Arya working by her side and doing all the numbers that confuse her, and Tyrion keeping her sane and helping her not to forget the details, and Samwell, who has no more experience in rebuilding an ancestral castle than herself or Arya, but he reads, all kinds of books and all the time, and is incredibly resourceful. She has Podrick and Brienne as her protectors and, occasionally, her friends. And what if Winterfell is being erected in the slowest of rhythms? Better late than never, Sansa says to herself (and thinks of Tyrion, and doesn't know why), better late than never. Sansa is no myth, no giant, but she has time. And patience.

But Winterfell is not the only castle that suffered during the War; the whole North needs rebuilding, and so Sansa shares her workforce with another houses. It's the least she can do as Wardeness of the North. The inevitable result of such gentleness is to burden the ones who stay, including herself. It is for this very reason that Sansa finds herself in one of the smaller kitchens inside the Great Keep, cutting slices of lemon and flowers of anise to the flavoured water she (and Tyrion, supposedly, although he is never there when she wakes up and therefore, she can't affirm for sure) normally drinks in the mornings, before she breaks her fast, when she is approached by a shy Jeyne Poole. "My lady?"

Sansa raises her eyes, and gives her friend a smile. "For you, just Sansa." There is an abundance of Jeynes in the North, in Winterfell and through the Seven Kingdoms; but Jeyne Poole is the only one Sansa truly, personally cares about. They've never shared details about what happened to them; and tales about the horrors she suffered in the hands of the Bolton's bastard are enough for Sansa to never talk about it and never ask. Jeyne carries a guilt, though, referring to her as her _lady_ , the innocent familiarity of their friendship lost and replaced by a implicit contract of protection. Sansa keeps her safe; Jeyne never leaves her side. She is, maybe, what in the South is called a _lady companion_ or _lady in waiting_ ; to Sansa she is family, no different from Arya or Rickon. They waddle silently around the name of their dead and their grieves; they sew together, sometimes; they never dance, never talk about boys and songs like they used to. Jeyne works silently for Winterfell's reconstruction with a wary kind of hope, maybe trying to bury her own ghosts there; she is the complete opposite of Sansa, who wants everything as a perfect copy of the past. No, Jeyne wants it to be as different as possible, like her shadow, her contrast. Sansa knows she needs her, they need each other. "Can I help you?"

Jeyne is holding a bucket with dirty clothes, and her fingers clutch it until the knuckles are white as now. "I have- Actually yes, you could." She fidgets nervously. "It may not be the best time. It is important- to me, my lady."

"Oh, don't worry, Jeyne," Sansa smiles, and throws the sliced lemons into the water. "We have time now. You can speak."

"I've heard someone talking about- about you and Lord Tyrion leaving to the West, soon?"

Sansa stops her work, puts one hand on her waist, and considers Jeyne's words. "Oh, sure, this," she says, absently, and raises one eyebrow. "Who told you about that?"

Jeyne almost instantaneously panics, wide eyes filled with fear. "I've heard- one of the cooker's daughter- I'm sorry, Sansa, this is not of my concern-," and she is about to leave, looking anywhere but at Sansa's face.

"No, don't go," Sansa hurries. She sometimes forgets that Jeyne grew used to feel guilty for anything that happens, and so she softens her voice. "It is all right, Jeyne. I'm not angry, I'm just..." she looks around, trying to find an amenable word, and shrugs. "― Curious."

"I've heard rumours, it's all," Jeyne says. Sansa grins to her.

"You mean gossip."

Jeyne smiles too, and it is the greatest victory of the day. "You know how these things are."

"Oh, I know," Sansa says, and shares a knowing look with her friend. "But, yes. I haven't talked to you about it yet because it won't be soon," Sansa ensures. "A couple of years, maybe more." She suspects someone heard Tyrion mentioning it, during that feast in the last month. It's not so much the fact that the gossip exists that bothers her, but the fact she didn't _know_ about this particular one. Sansa has her ears everywhere, in the North and beyond; it is amazing how, sometimes, it is easy to forget to pay attention to her own home. Maybe because she feels safer here than anywhere else.

(Oh, people talk. Always. About her, about her husband. Little has changed, she suspects, from a outsider's point of view; she and Tyrion never displayed public demonstrations of affection, and they won't start now. The way he touches her cheek and she clings to him at night, her hard-won smile and his kind, soft words, are for them alone.

They don't have a child, after all, and this speaks louder than anything else. The man who never bedded his own wife; the winter Queen of the North. It shields them, the names they've been given. If she looks more comfortable than she used to in his presence, people only say they have grown used to each other; if she defends him from mean jokes, it is her honour, not only his, which is at risk; of course she must defend her husband, as a dutiful, obedient wife. And if he looks at her as if she is the sky itself, well, she is Sansa Stark; possibly any man in his position would look at her like that? And he, the Imp, more than any of them? 

People see what they want to see. Sansa learnt it from the best.)

Jeyne nods slowly. "I see," she says, oddly disappointed. 

Sansa frowns, confused, tilts her head to the side. "Winterfell is your home as much as it is mine, Jeyne," she says, kindly but firmly. "When I leave," and gods, these words make everything so real that she needs to drill herself to stay calm. "You can stay. She will always be here for you, if you need her protection," and as she speaks, Jeyne only grows sadder until she suddenly understands. "Oh. Unless―"

Jeyne looks at the ground.

"Unless this is not what you were planning to ask me?" Sansa suggests.

"No, Sansa," she answers. "Would you take me with you? To the West? Do you think Lord Tyrion would mind?"

Sansa ignores all the ghosts hovering above their heads. "The Lion's Den? Would you go?" she asks.

"Anywhere but here," she murmurs in response, so low Sansa barely hears it- but she does, after all, and her heart misses a beat. "Lord Tyrion is not a terrible man. The others are all dead, aren't them? And, besides, _you_ are going."

"He is my husband," Sansa explains. "I have a duty towards him. Casterly Rock belongs to Tyrion, just as Winterfell belongs to RIckon."

"I have a duty towards you," Jeyne snaps back.

"No you don't, Jeyne. You are free to―"

"I'm not free," Jeyne says.

They stare at each other, gracefully, in silence.

"You can leave, you know," Sansa says, when it grows uncomfortable. "We can find you a good, kind man, a husband―"

"I don't wish to get married, ever again," Jeyne says, for the first time fierce and sharp, with a determination Sansa rarely sees in anyone. She takes a deep breath and raises her chin. "And no man would have me. You know it well, my lady."

"Just Sansa, Jeyne," Sansa asks, somewhat anguished.

"I would rather follow you, wherever you decide to go," she says, firmly, her voice unshaken. "It's close to the sea, if I remember it correctly?"

And Sansa thinks― _oh. Theon. All right. Theon._

"Yes," she smiles. She knows it is a sad smile, but she gives it all the same. "The Sunset Sea. It must be very beautiful." She stops, clasps her hands. "Of course I can take you with me, if it pleases you."

Jeyne doesn't smile back, but her shoulders drop, relaxed. "It would please me, yes."

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


Of all the things in the short list of activities they engage together, working is the easiest of them.

Sansa's solar is contiguous to their chambers; at night, though, she prefers the table placed next to their bed. This way, it feels a little less like the work to be done in Winterfell and the North is swallowing every piece of her life and mind. She has been trained to do this, to run a castle, but it is northerner politics that puzzles her the most; most of the things she learnt in the South, at court and with Petyr, just don't apply here in the same fashion. Tyrion never finishes what he was supposed to at twilight, too, and so, more often than not, they spend a couple of hours after supper reading and answering lingering, bothering letters just to shorten the piles that accumulate on their desks; or planning the next day so they can gain half an hour of sleep in the morning; sometimes, they plan Rickon's lessons together, but most of the nights they merely share the table, side by side, in silence. It is not peaceful; work never is. But his presence makes it more bearable and less tiring. Sometimes she believes he can _feel_ her moods in the air and the reasons behind them. When she is too stressed out, he pours out wine for her without asking. When she is confused he will hand her a document, a book, a note. He begins, "My lady, what are the names of those―" and she answers "The Fenns of the Neck" before he can finish his question; she inquires, "husband, where is that book that I―" and he points to the bookcase resting against the wall, barely moving his eyes from his own book, "third shelf, second from left to right. And if you wouldn't mind bringing one for me?" When he is too tired, Sansa takes the quill from his hand. "Go to bed, husband," she will say when he protests. "Let me handle this."

As the time went by, the invisible limits that divided the table in two halves became naturally less and less clear. There's a stool by the side of his chair, and they both have separate drawers with different keys; but his wine stains her parchments and some pages of his books smell like chamomile tea. It is hard to say, in the organized mess of the weird life they are building together, what is still hers and hers alone. More and more parts of her desk are _theirs_.

Sansa is thinking about this one night, about how easily they trusted each other in practical matters, and how some other areas don't flow as smoothly. He still kisses her forehead first thing in the morning, before he leaves the bed a couple of hours earlier than she does; he still keeps his hands where her clothes are covering her skin when he holds her, at night; once, in the first night of the full moon, he spent a lot of time studying every inch of her face, with his eyes, with fingertips; but they've never kissed again. Sometimes he touches her jaw-line as if he is playing a high-harp. Delicate. A clawless lion. She is wine from the better vineyard and the oldest harvest and he is trying very, very hard, to be sober.

Sansa is no longer so naive as to mistake his fear for gentleness.

It is, in the end, curiosity, more than desire. She closes the book with the accounts of Winterfell. Looks to the side, at him. He is reading something, searching for a specific line or word. "I'm retiring to bed, my lord," she notifies.

He looks up from the page. "Yes, sure. I'll be there in a minute."

It has been precisely eighteen days, more than two weeks, since that morning when he came to her and she told him out loud, in plain, clear words, that she wanted him. She doesn't know what else he needs and decides she is done with the waiting. When he comes closer to kiss her cheek, almost unconscious of his own movement, she tilts her head to the side, just enough to catch his mouth. And before he can react, be surprised or afraid, she puts one firm hand on his nape, keeping his face close to hers, and he raises a hand that cradles the back of her neck; and in the first seconds it is just this, their linked mouths and their ragged breathing against each other, like in the first time. Until he moves his lips, so, so carefully, the tip of his tongue tracing her lower lip before he gently sucks at it, and Sansa gasps. She can feel the corner of his lips raising in a tiny smile. She had never felt anyone's smile _in_ her mouth before. It is a new kind of healing, one she wasn't aware of, and she kisses his smile as if she is trying to feed from it, from him, a little clumsy and a little kind, and finally darts out her tongue between his lips, mutely asking _let me in_. He doesn't hesitate: she finds no resistance in her way as he opens his mouth to her, as if he had been only waiting.

Sansa likes kissing. Harry hadn't kissed her very often, but she wishes he had. Petyr always kissed her, but she wishes he hadn't. There is something inherently exciting about kissing someone who is as eager as herself, and she likes everything about it: she likes the feeling of his tongue, velvet-smooth, sliding against hers, and the low, deep sound he makes with the back of his throat, half-surprise and half-pleasure, when they first touch. She likes that it grows deeper, but never faster; likes the rhythm of it, a slow, sultry waltz of their mouths; she likes how he lets her lead, likes how his hand feels generously warm as it caresses her face, slides down her neck. This is not their second kiss: it is, rather, a different kind of first. She breaks apart after he slows it down, and they press their foreheads together for a moment, slightly out of breath.

"Well, hello, darling," he whispers, toying with a loosen strand of her hair and resigning to cup one of her cheeks.

She giggles. "Hello. I was just leaving."

"I recall it," he murmurs, and brushes his lips against hers again. His lips are smooth except for the scar, and Sansa likes the contrast. "What was that about?"

One of her eyebrows raises inquisitively. "I'm kissing my husband good night. Can't I?"

"Oh, my lady, your husband is definitely not _objecting_ ," he says, and Sansa chuckles quietly, and let it fades to a smile, that too fades and leaves only amusement in her eyes, amusement and something else that paints him with different colours. 

(Because Sansa is tired of men and their desires; and she likes the way they have settled into each other in the last weeks. It is a comfortable arrangement and a part of her wants to leave it like that for quite a long time. Sex is too raw and too animal and it misses that ethereal, untouchable quality of the songs she so loved as a young girl. Sansa is no maid, no more; she does not expect a sudden, consuming passion to flare for her husband out of the sudden, no matter her affections for him. This is not how her body works. She has always been the kind of woman whose pleasure is built slowly; a hard woman to love and please. Maybe too hard.

She wants him, in a way: she wants to merge her skin with his, so he won't leave her side; she wants to drag out the sadness in his eyes and the grief in his voice; and if her roots are to grow again somewhere one day, she wants it to be next to his, next to him, so she will see when he finally blossoms, for Sansa truly believes he will. She wants him as a woman waiting for spring, growing seeds, hoping, and even now, when she is feeling the start of something that has all the potential to grow into truly arousal, it isn't, fundamentally, about desire. It is not passion, not yet: but it is not pity, either.

It is a kindness. For him and her both, to touch and be touched. She is always so _numb_ ; Sansa lives through her day trying to ignore all her movements ― of her spine, of her clasped hands, of her feet, the tilt of her head ― rehearsing and repeating them to exhaustion until they became muscular memory, so she doesn't need to plan them every time. It is closed in itself, this body of hers; but here, under a gentle touch, she allows herself to bloom. She closes her eyes, and all her senses mingle and mix as one: like she is listening to his hands, touching his voice, tasting the warmth of his breathing beneath her lids. 

And now, his lips are kiss-swollen, probably a mirror of hers, and his eyes shine with joy, and the constant scowl of irony that usually shapes brow is gone, and she thinks he looks almost beautiful.

Not pretty, like Jon is. Not handsome, like Harry had been.

Just― _beautiful_ , like a sky full of stars, like the golden glow of the sunset over the red leaves in the heart-tree.)

"I will leave you to your work," she says, then, but makes no move to get up and leave. His hand is still there, on her cheek, so she closes her eyes and leans into it for a second, and then shifts her face to the side so she can kiss his palm, and then his wrist, mostly because she wants to gauge his reaction, how far can she go; his fingers curl in her face, around her ear.

"If you keep doing that, I won't let you," he warns her. She muffles a chortle against his hand, and opens her eyes in time to catch him looking at her almost entranced.

 _Good_ , Sansa thinks, _good_.

She is willing to rip out the fear from his hands with her very claws, if she has to.

"I'm sorry," she smiles, making it sound equal parts wicked and truly sorry.

He seems to catch his breath for a second. "Don't be," he asks, and his voice does _something_ ; Sansa doesn't know what, she just know where, right under her lower belly and spreading through her legs, and before she knows it, she is bowing her head to his and his mouth is there, halfway, searching for hers too. She lets him kiss her this time. He is not as gentle as before; more possessive, hungrier. She mewls, fingers coiling in his hair; in the position they are in, each in their chairs, there's no way to bring their bodies closer, unless she climbs onto his lap; but that she won't do, not now. Maybe they need to lead this carefully. He is a breakable thing, her husband. Sansa is made of a stronger material, but she has been broken before, too. And they know the sound of time, now, too well to let themselves be rushed by it.

"Tyrion," she laughs, like a reminder, the letters of his name all messy in his lips. 

"Sansa." He smiles. Opens his eyes.

Ah! She likes _so much_ the way he says her name.

He withdraws the hand from her face first; she slowly removes her fingers from his hair, letting them rest on his shoulder, and then both of them start to create some distance between their mouths until she is free from his grasp. They look at each other in the eye for some time, and finally, Sansa runs a thumb over his lower lip, cleaning it, feeling it wet under her fingertips. "Good night, my lord."

He looks at her eyes, her mouth, her eyes again. "Good night, my lady."

And Sansa finally stands and makes her leave to the bed. In her way, she discreetly puts her trembling hand over her heart, and her throat, and when she lies on the bed, she misses his body next to hers ― 

and if it feels different than yesterday, if she feels intrigued and nervous and disproportionately happy with how easily he reacted to her, if she wants more than comfort tonight, Sansa, for now, lets the newborn feeling alone.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


Sometimes, Sansa feels like she and Rickon are strangers to each other.

There are little gray-and-white threads linking her to the North, to Winterfell. They are fragile, but numerous, and for all the mistakes they have made, and the persons they became, she and Arya know who they are, where they came from, they know their words. Rickon feels loose, adrift in space and time, misplaced and often lost. He was too young to understand or remember anything (or anyone, if she is being honest) when the War came to House Stark, and it is hard to remind him the reason he must follow some orders; some are harder than others.

It doesn't go well when she brings the topic of marriage, one cold afternoon. Sansa tries to explain that he is the future of their House. That he is the heir to Winterfell and that he must marry, and have children, and rule. He speaks some barbaric tale about how the wildlings _kidnap_ their brides and that they have to threaten each other to death or something of the sorts, and Sansa tells him he will act in no such manner, that he is a Stark of Winterfell and that he will treat his bride with the respect she deserves; he retorts saying it is not a disrespect ― and, anyway, how could he respect a woman who can't defend herself? Sansa says, irritated, _you are no wildling_ , and regrets it immediately because then _he_ gets angry, and says she can't force him to marry anyone because _you are not my mother_ and leaves the room without excusing himself. 

Arya probably listens to the whole fight, because she comes in not two minutes later. "Seriously, Sansa," Arya begins, shaking her head, but comes to sit by her side.

"Leave me alone," Sansa rolls her eyes, massaging her temples, but she doesn't mean it and Arya knows it.

"He is eleven. Is that necessary?"

"I'm not saying he needs to marry anyone _tomorrow_ ," Sansa mumbles. Alliances had been sealed, _marriages_ had happened, between much younger people. Not that Sansa thinks it ideal. "But the sooner he accepts he _has_ to, the sooner he will accept his other responsibilities and stop acting like a child. It's time."

"He _is_ a child," Arya says. She has a knife in her hand, Sansa realizes, and she is using it to mince a pear; she brings the razor with the piece to her mouth.

"Well, he can't be a child forever, can he?" Sansa mutters. Gods, her head hurts. At eleven, Sansa was in King's Landing, alone. Arya was― only the gods know where she was.

Arya probably feels her distress. She pats her shoulder and offers Sansa the pear. "Hungry?"

Sansa sighs and accepts it.

That night, she tries to sew ― mainly to distract herself: nothing important like a banner or a dress, and Tyrion is reading across her on the couch. He peeks at her over his book once in a while, and she ignores it, focusing on the profile of the wolf that is in her head and is starting to come alive in the fabric in her hands, until she hears him closing his book with a thud that almost startles her, but no more than his exasperated voice: "Oh, gods, I give up. Speak. You'll make me mad."

She frowns, keeping her eyes on her work except from the quick, confused glance she manages at him. "Pardon? I'm sewing."

"No. You are thinking so loud that I can hear you. I can't _read_ , it is distracting." He points with his finger to the space between his own eyebrows. "You have a frown here." And he makes a gesture towards her lap. "And these stitches are terrible. _I_ can sew better than this."

Sansa sighs, consciously trying to relax the muscles of her face, and puts the embroidery frame down. It is really bad. "You don't sew," she mutters.

He crosses his arms over his chest. For some reason, Sansa is aware of them, of their _form_ of how his shortened arms look... _muscular_ under the tunic that covers them. She remembers they _feel_ strong at night, anyway, when he holds her to sleep. "As I have said in the past: you don't know me as much as you think you do, Lady Stark," he declares, but his voice lacks a real reprimand in it.

Sansa's eyes widen in her surprise. "Can you sew? Really?"

He shrugs, half-grinning in that infamous way of his. "Don't look so surprised. I am a man of many talents," he says, and takes a useless cushion between them, places it on his lap and gives it two little pats. "Give me your feet."

"What do you want my feet for?" Sansa asks, suspicious.

"Testing one of my many talents." When she just keeps looking at him, wary, Tyrion rolls his eyes. "Trust me, wife."

She decides to give him a chance, and stretches her legs on the couch until her feet are resting over the cushion on his lap. He takes her sandals out and lets them fall on the floor, runs a finger over the bridge of her right foot, and down to the ankle, almost as if admiring them. It is weird at first, but not bad; Sansa does not pretend to understand men and their obsessions. But then he is taking her foot into both of his hands, thumbs placed against the sole just above the arch, and pressing circles against it with graceful expertise. His fingers are _firm_ , his touch hard, and as he continues to massage her right foot, all the tension held into her lungs leaves in a long exhale. She lets her lids fall closed, heavy, as the tiredness of the day that was weighing on her begins to fade; her head drop backwards, too, and at some moment he touches her somewhere that sends a laziness dissipating through her whole body, up to her legs and spine. It feels so insanely good ― Sansa doesn't know why, it is just a foot, after all, but she lets out a involuntary, soft moan, and when she hears it – when she realizes it actually came from her – she opens her eyes and hides her mouth behind her hand, as if she could swallow the sound, trap it back into her mouth. She feels her cheeks burning.

"I'm sorry," she murmurs.

He is smirking, all smug. "I’m flattered."

"You’re good at this," she says, trying to sound at least dignified. It doesn’t work, not when her whole body feels sluggish and her mind, dull.

"Thank you." He doesn’t look up to her face, still very focused on his work. It is inevitable, for Sansa, to wonder about other possible skills of his hands. "Although not everyone is as sensitive as you, I must say." Just then he looks at her, never stopping. "Such a pleasant surprise."

"Not everyone," Sansa repeats, trying to ignore the way his eyes catch the fire, blazing. "Did you practice a lot?."

He laughs lightly, eyes coming back to the task at hand. "Oh, let’s just not have this particular conversation, my lady."

"All right," Sansa resigns herself. Really, she does not mind that much. She just wants him to keep talking and to keep touching her. He dabs her right foot and she switches the feet, giving him the left one. "One could think you are trying to seduce me."

"One could," he agrees. Tyrion can be insufferable when is feeling smug, but Sansa is not in a state of mind to resent him for it.

So she frowns one eyebrow, smiling with the corner of her mouth. "Are you?"

"Maybe," he answers, nonchalantly. "Is it working?"

"Not a bit."

He narrows his eyes to her, as someone who doesn't believe in her at all. Sansa just chuckles in response. He _is_ very good at it, after all. "To be perfectly honest with you," he begins to explain, looking around the room distractedly, his fingers working deliciously on her left foot – for some unfathomable reason, it feels even better than the right one, "my main goal was to make you relax."

"Well," Sansa shifts in the sofa, brushes the razor of her teeth against her lower lip, trying not to let it show that the easiness taking control of her weak limbs is starting to feel uncomfortably as something else, something she cannot quite name and, worst of all, cannot stop. " _That_ is certainly working."

"Now you can speak about what troubles you," he says, elucidative as usual. Sansa thinks him dangerous. He could rip out all sorts of secrets from her doing this.

"I spoke to Rickon today," she surrenders, at last. "About a possible engagement."

"And?" he asks, his thumb massaging hard the arch of her left foot. 

"It was tragic," Sansa sighs. He smiles, but it's a sympathetic, concerned type of smile.

"As in he does not wish to marry anyone?"

"He said I could not force him, I said he was not a wildling. He flew off the room," Sansa summarizes, moving a hand to the back of her neck to massage the tense muscles there herself. It doesn't work as well as what he is doing in her feet.

She closes her eyes for a moment, but hears his dry laughter. "I'm sorry."

"Me too," she sighs, opens her eyes again, and says, more cautiously, "also, I think Arya likes Gendry."

"Oh, do you think?" he inquires, a cunning look in his mismatched eyes.

Sansa glares at him. "I'm serious, Tyrion."

"So am I," he answers, unaffected. Arya is not easy to read, Sansa believes, but Tyrion is cleverer than most. "I can't see the issue. She is a second daughter. Let the girl marry for love." He stops, twists his lips and what's left of his nose. "Or whatever that is."

"He is a bastard," Sansa reminds him, and she thinks he gives a ironic smile at that, suppressed as it is, his mouth a thin line fidgeting at the corners.

"You shouldn't be judgmental about bastards."

"I'm not judgmental about his person," Sansa rebukes, annoyed. "But we are in small numbers. We can't lose the chance of an alliance." She takes the unfinished job in her lap, careful with the needle, and studies the half-contour of the direwolf. She didn't pay mind to the colours. The combination is weird, a orange thread against the gray cloth. "Rickon must marry a northerner, and you bind us to the Crown―"

"You are Jon's family," Tyrion interrupts her. "You are bonded to Daenerys whether you want it or not."

Sansa rebuffs. She can't help it. "Your opinions on your Queen are heavily blind-sided, husband," she mutters. Daenerys is far from being the worst monarch Westeros had seen, but Sansa remembers the sharpness of her purple, Targaryen eyes when they talked. She can be ruthless when she wants to; it bothers Sansa how much Tyrion acts as if she is incapable of doing harm. For all the gods, old and new, the woman had arrived with _dragons._ Sansa puts the matter aside. "I have northerner lords expecting to be rewarded for their loyalty during the Wars. Rickon must do his duty, I paid my price; Arya is a Stark as much as we are."

"Northener lords?" he frowns one eyebrow.

"Wyman Manderly sends me letters, once in a while. He is not explicit but he can be very stubborn. And I don't know what else I could give him." Sansa rubs her face, tiredly, her voice exhausted. Wyman Manderly might as well be the closest thing the North has of a southerner lord. He should make it easier for her. He doesn't. Truly, he doesn't. "He took care of Rickon. I can't just say _thank you for your service_."

"You actually can," Tyrion corrects. "He is your vassal. He did no more than his duty."

It is so much easier for Lannisters, Sansa thinks, who believe the whole world owed them things. "He risked his life. I don't think he did it out of duty."

"And he wants Arya's hand in marriage?" Tyrion asks, somewhat wary.

"He wanted mine," she confesses. "But I am taken. He didn't ask for hers, yet, but..." Sansa trails off.

Tyrion takes some time digesting that information, and then gives a single, understanding nod. "I mistook his affections for some kind of fatherly love." His fingers are still working on her feet, lighter now, but still good. He grimaces. "That is... Very disturbing."

Sansa, in spite of everything, chortles. "I don't think his affections have anything to do with it," she shrugs. "And I truly believe he cares about us. People are not so simple," she says, her voice softening in the end.

"You can always annul our marriage and marry him," Tyrion japes. "He is rich, a northerner―"

"I don't care about his gold more than I care about yours." Sansa cuts off. And she thinks she sees something in his eyes as his joke dies, then: a softness, a gratitude, a surprise. It distracts her, but just for a second. "He has granddaughters," she proceeds. "I thought about marrying one of them off with Rickon, but I don't think he would fancy the idea... Is it selfish of me? I don't want my brother to hate me." She sighs, feeling completely miserable, remembering the rage in Rickon's eyes that afternoon. "I think he hates me."

Tyrion caresses the bridge of her feet again and gives her the warmest of the looks. "Rickon doesn't hate you," he says, as if he were talking to a child that has been hurt. And then, more serious, more careful, and yet warm, "the Wars are over, you know."

"Not this one," Sansa says, staring at some imaginary point in front of her. "I think I'm a bad woman," she says, in a flat tone.

Tyrion seems confused with the declaration, so abrupt, and with her incongruous words. "Pardon?"

"I'm treating my little brother as if he is a stallion and my sister as a prize for something that was ours, anyway, by right," she explains, looking at her hands, her fingers fidgeting against each other. "What kind of woman thinks like that?"

"You're not him," Tyrion says, gently, the words themselves feeling like a kiss on her brow. She has to look him in the eye, but she thinks he knows what he means; she just doesn't know how _he_ can know, how easily he is able to follow her mind before she can speak it. Sansa holds his gaze as he completes. "Baelish. You have too much heart in you for that."

Sansa is not that sure. 

"But I will do what must be done all the same," she murmurs, and hates how much it feels like there's a tear in her voice. She swallows that lump down. "What does that say about me?"

"That you are a Stark, through and through?" he suggests, so kind that it plucks one tear from her. Sansa swipes it off with the back of her hand, hastily. "You are practical, and clever, and you have pure, good intentions, there is nothing cruel about this."

"Pure intentions are not enough," she retorts, angry at her own weakness, at her own incapacity to manage her feelings and, ultimately, her life and her family.

"Pure intentions are half of the way," Tyrion says, soothingly caressing her calves over her gown.

"And the other half?" Sansa dares, sadly.

"The other half is _life_. There's no way around it." He tugs at her ankle, beckoning her closer, and she slides on the couch until her upper legs are resting on his lap, not her feet. He gets rid of the cushion underneath her so she can fit more comfortably there, puts one hand on the back of her knee. It tickles, even with her gown on the way; she squirms, he notices and smiles, but moves his hand to rest on her thigh instead. "Talk to Rickon again tomorrow, try to stay calmer this time. He will come to his senses. Take your heart with you."

"My heart with me?" she asks. He is closer, now, close enough so she can toy distractedly with the line of his tunic.

He holds her wrist there, against his chest, taking some seconds to think. "I've met smart people, ambitious people, strong people. I've met people willing to do good and sacrifice themselves for great causes." He is not looking at her while he says it, not yet, but then he searches for her eyes, and there is something precious there, something Sansa holds on to. "You are all of that, for sure. But... You are the kindest person I've ever met. You have the kindest heart. And the more I know you, the more I'm in awe of you for that." _He really believes in what he is saying_ , Sansa thinks, incredulous. _He thinks I'm the kindest person he has ever met_. "So you should take it with you. So you won't become like him in the process of...," he makes a vague sign with his hand. "Doing what must be done, as you put it."

"Do you think I can do it?" she whispers, and damn him, but she is about to cry again. 

"I have no doubt you can do it." He brings her hand to his mouth, places a kiss on her knuckles, and then he is the one fidgeting, linking their fingers together as if it could help him. "Can I ask you something? It has been puzzling me for than a year."

Sansa smiles, curious, forgetting her misery for the moment. "Ask me."

He tries to collect himself. "When the wars ended, I thought you would ask me to annul our marriage. I was, indeed, ready to offer it to you when we met."

She waits, and when he adds nothing else, she quotes him: "that is not a question."

He snorts, not missing it. "Very funny."

Sansa smiles, more to herself than to him, and gets free from his grasp to cup his cheek instead. He clearly likes when she touches his face, although it also seems he censures himself for liking it. "I've spent all my youth thinking about who would I marry," she says, her voice the texture of old scars and past dreams. "First Joffrey. Then Willas Tyrell, and then, suddenly, you. Then my cousin Robin, and then Harry, and always Petyr, somehow, and then Jon, of all people." She sighs, only with the memory. It still weighs on her, after all these years. "I felt so tired. We were married already, and you never hurt me. I didn't need much else."

"And you would gain the Queen's favour?" he conveys. Sansa shrugs. 

"That helped."

"If you really wanted to gain her favour, you should have married Jon when she asked you to," he says. "The way I see it, you just stole her Hand away." 

Sansa does not know if it is possessiveness in his voice, as much as he tries to sound distant and impersonal, but she laughs it off anyway, a dry sound, not happy.

"If you think Daenerys Targaryen would love me any more had I married Jon, husband, you are a fool," she declares. "And I don't take you for a fool. Besides, the way _I_ see it, her Hand came willingly and too easily."

He knows she is right, so he half-smirks, but his tone is careful when he answers. "She is not as bad as you think."

"I don't think she is bad at all," Sansa retorts. And then mutters, "you always try to defend her."

"Because I know her, and I know that―," he begins to argue but suddenly stops, lifts his eyes to study her face in that scrutinizing, unsettling way, "― Are you jealous?"

"No!," she snaps back immediately. "I'm not jealous. It's just..." the hand on his face slides to his chest, resting there. "I've always felt you think of her and Jon as your family." She almost pouts, her eyes down. "But I am your wife," she says, voice small, like she is collecting that old debt of the vows they made when they were forced to: _you're mine_.

He puts one finger under her chin to raise her head so she will hold his gaze. "And I am here, living in this frozen hell, for you," he murmurs, full and dense. "Doesn't that count for something?"

She tries not to smile; fails. He really hates the snow. "It does."

"Jealousy suits you _so fine_ ," he chuckles, his eyes warm and shining.

"I'm not jealous," she rolls hers. "But I won't deny that I am waiting for her to summon you to King's Landing, give your post as Hand back, and then you will be gone."

"No one can force me to leave your side," he says, making his voice surprisingly soft, as if paying his own debt, as if he is saying _I am yours_ , or at least this is how Sansa imagines in her head.

"Don't be naive. Naivety most definitely does not suit you. She is the Queen," she says, trying not to sound so young and vulnerable, "she can."

"I said no one," he repeats. Sansa sighs in defeat. Tyrion is one of the smartest men she knows, but it is impossible to persuade him to reason, sometimes. "If Aunt Genna didn't drag me back to the Rock up until this day, no one else can. Believe me," he says. He sounds like he respects this woman that Sansa has only heard about; or actually, as if he fears her, and he rarely talks in this way about anyone.

"I haven't met your Aunt yet."

"Lucky you," he mumbles; she laughs a little. She has to. He gently touches her legs, trying to get up, and she moves them aside. "I'm going to wash my hands," he says. "Go to bed. You look like you could use some sleep."

But after he leaves, Sansa lingers on the couch, staring at the flames that are starting to die in the hearth and thinking about his words, about lords and queens and old vows.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


Sansa does not speak to Rickon in the morrow, nor in the days that follow.

Her lord and brother spends with her the strictly necessary time and no more; he does not dwell in the rooms at night if she is there, and avoids her presence and her gaze, creating no breach in his defences, no chance for her to speak. It is only by the end of the week that Sansa arrives at her own solar, where he should have been waiting for her, to find no one there.

She seeks for Rickon in his chambers; in Arya's, Tyrion's, even in Bran's, the empty one, always arranged, waiting for him to come home. She asks Podrick, who is too busy seeking for his own sword, that was, apparently, stolen; Brienne hasn't seen him either. She seeks in the kitchens, in the armory and in the courtyard. He is nowhere to be found and Sansa starts to feel partially angry, partially worried, a unpleasant knot in her stomach of irrational dread. She asks for the guards in turn at the gates and they swear the boy hasn't left. _He is home_ , Sansa repeats to herself, coming back to the Great Keep to search for him again, _he is safe and home, he must be here, somewhere._

Jeyne is the one who saves her. Sansa is searching in her own chambers for the third time. Tyrion is not there, and she knows she is crossing the line of the irrational; she just left this room, she knows he cannot be here, and she is about to seek in ridiculous places, under her bed or inside the wardrobes, only because she can't stop looking for him, she can't lose him, and that is when Jeyne enters with a new set of clean blankets in her arms. "Oh. Sansa," she greets, and walks towards the night stand.

Sansa lets herself fall on the edge of the mattress. "I lost Rickon."

Jeyne turns around, hands free; she frowns her brow and crosses her arms over her chest. "I beg your pardon, my lady?"

"I can't find him," Sansa says. She must sound delirious. "I searched everywhere. I lost the heir to Winterfell. _Inside_ Winterfell." And then she buffs, not ladylike at all. "How come he got away from a entire household? This is absurd."

"Isn't he in the godswood?" Jeyne inquires, as if it were the most obvious thing. "He normally fancies a walk with Shaggydog, when he is not with Podrick or with Tyrion or with you."

Once she is there, it doesn't take too much time to follow Rickon's path. The forest is deadly silent, the presence of old gods and old ghosts hovering among the trees; she finds him angrily attacking a innocent tree with a sword, a sword with a _real_ blade, not a wooden sword. He is sweating and panting and grunting in pain. Shaggydog raises his head and snarls at her.

"Rickon," Sansa says, keeping her fear at bay with a deep, slow inhale. "Control your wolf. We need to talk."

He does not turn to look at her, but Shaggydog sits back again. "Nothing of this is mine," Rickon says, the words breathless with his effort, and gods, he sounds so devastated, so _furious_. He is eleven, Sansa thinks. No child of eleven should be a turmoil like this. "I'm the _last one_. I'm the last son. I'm not supposed to inherit anything."

 _Oh, brother_ , Sansa laments, holds back a sob, _everything would be easier, if you weren't so smart._

"It is yours," she says, and repeats, for both of their sakes. "Winterfell is yours."

"It should be yours," he says, striking two blows against the tree trunk. "You're so much better at this than I. No." He stops, breathing hard, and his distorted face calms and softens in a second as he stares at the violent destruction in front of him. "It should be Bran's."

 _But Bran is not here. Do your duty_ , Sansa wants to say, wants to scream; but then she remembers, _take your heart with you._

"I miss him too," she whispers. He looks at her for the first time. "Bran." Sansa no longer wears her heart as a collar, in her chest, exposed for anyone to see and break. She tucks it inside; hides it. But her brother is her blood, the spitting image of Robb at his age, the same wild temperament of Arya, and for him, Sansa can, Sansa _must_ , to wear her heart out. "I miss him the most, as I know you do. But Father-," and what if her voice cracks? Let it crack. Not everything is made of steel. Sometimes one needs to bend in order to be whole. "Father would want you to have it. You know he would."

"No, I don't know," Rickon retorts, turning his back on her once more and swinging his sword against the wood again. "I will be Lord of Winterfell because everybody else is dead."

Her heart, worn out and tired, maddens in her fragile chest. "Yes," she says, placid and calm and hurt, "yes, you will be Lord of Winterfell because everybody else is gone." And maybe it is this calm, or the fact she won't lie to him, not about this, that makes him finally stop. He lowers his sword to the ground and looks at her, intrigued. "I will be Lady of Casterly Rock because, once, our family's executors wanted to claim our home and forced me to marry Tyrion," she says, shrugging, feigning indifference. It is a rehearsed movement, but it takes a trained eye to see it, and Rickon, thanks all the gods, is not there yet. "They dragged me. I tried to fight them, but they dragged me. I was twelve." She allows herself to take a fearless step closer. "Tragedy and war brought us where we are, yes. There are things we can't change." And she thinks about her husband, just for a second. About the impossible odd that they would come to rely on each other. "But there are things we can."

"You shouldn't leave Winterfell," he mutters, and Sansa finally sees his fury cooling into pain. Which is not, exactly, better, but it is easily handled in face of the fact he is still holding a sword. Something about him in the moment is so oddly soft, so much like Bran, that she feels like crying. Gods, she misses Bran. She misses Bran in a way that leaves despair in its wake, in a way that urges her to prepare his chambers, lets them ready for him, even if she knows he won't come back home. It is a sort of madness that she can't help but hope. Maybe this is her problem. She cannot stop hoping.

"Tyrion is not happy here. And he has a duty to his House, just as you have a duty to yours. A woman must stay beside her husband," Sansa says, and takes another step nearer. This is the breach. This is her chance. "Your future wife, too, must come to live in Winterfell and stay by your side."

She almost cry in relief when he doesn't run away, or screams. He looks to the ground, using the keen tip of the sword to draw imaginary nothings on the earth, thinking.

"Can I marry Arya?" he asks, finally. Sansa freezes from head to toes.

"No," she says, in a reflex. It sounds edgy; she recomposes herself. "No, you can't."

"But I like her," he argues, and Sansa wants to hold him, to protect the little that is left of his innocence while she can. "We are friends. She is annoying sometimes, but we fight together." He stops drawing and looks up, to her face. "And she is already here."

"She is your sister," Sansa says. She hasn't talked to him about the recent history of Westeros, yet, about Jaime and Cersei Lannister and how they brought the realm down with their sick love, about the Targaryens. "It is very good to be friends with your future wife, but there are other things in a marriage apart from companionship that you should not do with your sister." Sansa looks away. Thinks about the right words and adds, "Ideally. For us Starks, it is not... Ideal."

He grimaces. "You mean babies."

Sansa can't help but laugh, then. "Yes. Yes, I mean babies."

"You are married and you don't have babies," Rickon points out, his eyes holding some of Arya's wickedness.

"But I will," she says back, her tone light. "Honestly, you should not worry about fathering children _now_. Nor anytime soon, for the matter," Sansa completes. Now that she is close enough there is a tree that has been spared her brother's fury, and she leans her back against it, crossing her hands behind her. "I just want you to consider the possibility. Maybe you can know her in person, talk to her."

"What if I don't like her?" Rickon says, with anguish in his voice and in his face.

"I've thought about someone for you," Sansa says, her voice soft as a mother's. "She comes from an island where every woman is raised to be a fighter."

That seems to catch his attention and, maybe, his interest. "Really?"

"She doesn't fight with swords, though. Maybe you can teach each other. Speaking of," Sansa says, pointing with her chin to the weapon in his hand. "Where did you get this?"

(She knows the answer. But Ned always did that to her, to Arya and Robb: make them say out loud things they've done, even if he already knew it; not because he was cruel, but because he wanted to unburden them from the heavy weight of secrets.

Sansa is trying. Oh ― Sansa is _trying_.)

"It belongs to Pod," he admits. Sansa suppresses her smile. "Don't punish him," he asks, and there is a kindness there in his confession that she likes to think he learnt from her. "He was in his bath. It's not his fault."

"I won't. You shouldn't walk around with deadly weapons, you know," she says, not really upset. "It's dangerous."

Rickon wields the swords, swings it around with ease, and Sansa can't help but notice he is surprisingly strong for a boy this age. "Do you want to learn?"

She laughs a scoff. "Will you teach me?" she asks, ironically.

But in the next second he coming closer and holding her hand and Sansa doesn't even consider resisting him. He positions her in front of the tree he begun to destroy, and places the sword in her hand. It is heavier than she expected.

"Hold it like this," he says, wrapping his hands around hers, guiding her fingers, and then cupping her elbows. "And raise your arms." Then he moves to stay by her side. He looks down. "Mind your feet." Sansa notices, widening her stance, and watches as he moves his arms graciously, waving a imaginary sword. "Now move like this."

She is terrible. The first time, her blow doesn't even reach the wood, and in the second, she almost loses her balance and falls. Rickon laughs, clearly amused. (He laughs prettily, looking younger, his true age. It is a rare sound, a rare sight.) Sansa tries not to get upset with him as she hands him back the sword, carefully. "There is a reason why I don't do this, Rick."

"You are right," he concedes. "I hope this bride you found me is better than you."

"She is, although it is not that hard to be better than me," Sansa says, sitting among the roots of the nearest tree. The smile that's left on her brother's mouth looks very much like Robb's, and she finds herself saying, not as sad as she could be, "Robb tried to teach me, once."

Rickon nods, leaves the sword on the ground and comes closer. Sansa makes room for him and he sits by her side, crossing his legs. For a very long time, he just rips out the grass from the soil, plucking herbs growing around the roots, until he murmurs, finally, "I don't remember him."

Sansa fondles his auburn hair, damp with sweat, and he doesn't push her away. "That's fine, brother."

"Can you tell me?" he asks, looking down. He sounds guilty, scared, lonely, all the things he shouldn't. "About― about them?"

Sansa tells him.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


She feels a thousand pounds lighter, that night.

When she leaves her bath, Tyrion is reading in the corner of the couch, a cup and a flagon resting on the night stand by his side. The fire is burning quiet and lovely in the hearth in front of him, leaving his blond curls paler against the dark ones; he doesn't notice her presence, at first, and as she watches him turning a page, taking a sip of his wine, Sansa feels a sudden, sweeping flood of affection for her husband. It has happened every so often these last days, and she welcomes the feeling. It is the end of the day, after all; she would hate this moment if he weren't here, but he is. Maybe it's just because she is happy, because she spoke about her family the whole night and she is still painless despite of it, or because she and Rickon are in good terms; maybe she feels hopeful, but as she approaches him and he finally acknowledges her, Sansa catches herself smiling. She is wearing a gown that she hasn't used since her time in the Vale and that is incredibly impractical for northerner weather: fabric too thin and too much skin exposed, too much of her chest visible from the neckline that is deeper than she is used to wear. But the silk is blue, darker than her eyes, and she likes the contrast against the fiery red of her hair, falling loose over her shoulders.

"Good evening, my lady," he greets her, closes his book, one finger marking the page. She sits on the couch by his side, leans down to kiss his cheek, and sees when he pretends he hasn't notice her choice of clothes. "I haven't seen you all day. Too busy?"

"Yes." She tucks one curl of his hair, one of the black ones, behind his ear. "I spoke to Rickon."

He raises his eyebrows in a surprised understanding. "Oh." He nods, just once, probably trying to evaluate her spirits in the light of this new information. "And, I hope..."

"It went well," she assures him, and he visibly relaxes. "We spent some good time together, actually. Not studying. Just... Together." Sansa grimaces, wrinkles her nose. "He tried to teach me how to wield a sword."

"A warrior in her own right," Tyrion laughs. "I'm sorry I missed this."

"You're not," Sansa corrects him. "I'm a complete disaster." He is still smiling at her when she looks at the tome in his hand. It does not look like work, so she doesn't feel so guilty when she leans over him. He doesn't let go of the book but his arms shift to accommodate her body between them. "Hi," she whispers.

"Hi, beautiful," he murmurs, fondling her cheek, tracing the line of her jaw as he always does, sighing when she seals their mouths together.

It feels different, to be loved by an ugly man.

Harry had touched her as a man who receives a golden bag after a tourney- that is, as a prize; precious, but earned, and therefore undoubtedly his to do as he wished. Petyr touched her as a man who steals a crown, someone who does not believe anything can be earned at all, only taken.

Tyrion touches her, now, as a sinful man enters in a temple, or lands his feet in sacred ground: unworthy of her, the goddess, but in need of her favor, waiting for her wrath or her blessing, and, in any of the outcomes, ultimately conscious of his own indignity. He touches her hesitantly. Cautiously. Sansa does not find it arousing, but it is, or it can be, _endearing_. It makes her a little bit more his, a little bit less sour. It makes her heart swell with fondness: a man afraid of touching her! Maybe this particular complication is all she needed.

And so, while he watches her with observant, silent eyes, she puts one leg around him, and then the other is just there as she straddles his lap, with all the courage she can muster. It is a comfortable position; there's a rhombus-shaped void creating a secure distance between his groin and her open legs. His arms and legs are small, but not the rest of his body, and so she is not as taller as she usually is when they are standing, his eyes on the level of her chin — if she grabs him by the hair, by example, and pulls his head up, his mouth will be right there, near to hers, just as her body is within his reach, if he dares: all parts of her, limbs and belly, and breasts and neck, and— 

"Myrish lace," he declares, catching the hem of her dress between his fingers: it covers her just above her knees, but in her position, the fabric slides higher, exposing part of the skin of her thighs. He looks into her eyes and then down: her neck, her bare shoulders, the neckline of her nightgown, the upper curve of her breasts. He tries not to stare and looks up to her face again.

She smiles. "I was starting to think you hadn't noticed."

He scoffs nervously. " _Please_ , Sansa."

"Do you like it?" she asks, her voice sweet and naive.

"Of course I like it," he says, in a voice Sansa would think casual if she didn't know him, "the colour matches your eyes."

Now she is just trying not to laugh. "Do you think so? Thank you."

"I've never seen this before," he comments, letting go of the brim to put his free hand — modestly — on one of her hips.

"I've never used it before," she explains.

"I know you haven't. I wouldn't have forgotten this sight," he murmurs, and strokes his hand up and down her waist, as Sansa looks at him, waiting, smiling. She can smell his fear like a wolf follows the song of the blood of its prey. "Is this a test?" he asks. It sounds like a jape but Sansa knows better. "Because if it is, I'll fail."

"Maybe," she shrugs, and takes the book that he is holding in his other hand, closes it, puts it on the couch by their side. He follows her actions with a half-smirk on his lips. "Define failure." 

"How am I supposed," he starts, in that know-it-all, instructive way of speaking she can love or hate, depending on the occasion, "— to concentrate on my night reading while you wear _myrish lace_ and sits on my lap?"

"No one is forcing you to read, my lord," she says, landing two very innocent hands on his shoulders.

He presses his lips together for a moment, mouth a thin line, and then starts rambling, as he normally does when he is nervous. Sansa finds it adorable. "Well, you see, wife, I must discipline myself. Because, I've been told, being smart is the only redeeming quality I have left, and if I just stop reading at all, my brain will surely—"

Sansa pulls his head up, trying to be as careful as he is with her, and silences him with a kiss, tender and long. He makes his approval known with a grunt, his chest rumbling gravely against hers, and she adores it, she wants to hear it again. His mouth responds to hers, only moving where she demands him to move. "You talk too much," she says when they part, at last, lips brushing on his like a secret, her eyes still closed, her fingers still lost in his hair. His breath tastes of wine.

"It has put me in all sorts of trouble," he sighs dramatically, but at least now he has forgotten that damn book and finally closed both of his arms around her waist. 

"That I don't doubt," she laughs, and he laughs quietly with her. Sansa likes the way their bodies wave together. Her arms circle around his neck as she lowers her eyes to his. "You were lecturing me on the importance of good reading habits, before I so rudely interrupted you."

"That's true, that was very rude," he agrees, and kisses the corner of her mouth. It is kind, chaste, even, but it makes Sansa feel flushed in unexpected places. "A smart woman like you wouldn't want a dumb, empty-headed husband."

"Gods, no woman would want that," she says, feigning dread, feeling his mute chuckle against her lips. "But being smart is not your only redeeming quality," she murmurs, and again lets herself lean into him, presses her cheek against his cheek.

"Oh, no?" he asks, and keeps laying plume-kisses on her skin: on her jaw, her chin. 

"No... I admire your kindness, my lord, when you want to be kind," she says, and moves backwards, opening her eyes. She _sees_ him: he feels like honey in the back of her throat, slick and dense and sweet. "And you always want to be kind to me."

He shrugs and inspects her thoroughly, head to hips and legs and back up to her face again, and toys with the straps of her gown. "You happen to be a very inspiring woman."

"You are staring," Sansa says, because his eyes always come back to her bosom, a look that lingers just long enough but never a second too long, as if he is afraid of what he might do if he does not manage to look away. She drags the emotion out of her voice, testing the waters: it's not an accusation and it's not an invitation. It's a fact.

But he doesn't seem ashamed, for Sansa's surprise. His hands, both this time, come back to rest, unpretentiously, on her hips. "It's a very nice gown," he murmurs. "And you want me to stare." She smirks. Maybe he is right, she does, after all; but when she palms the back of his right hand and guides him to slide it up, until it reaches the curve of her waist, she sees the ball in his throat going up and down as he swallows dry. "Sansa—"

"I'm not going to break if you touch me," she says, keeping her hand over his, because it feels like a comfort for her as much as for him. She is not trying to tantalize him; a man like Tyrion surely would notice the farce of it. This is, after all, the only thing he has ever asked of her: the truth.

So she puts honesty into her words, as much as she is able.

"I'm touching you," he points out, and his voice almost doesn't shake. Almost. He avoids her gaze, fixed at their joined hands instead. "Truth be told, I can't keep my hands off of you lately," he adds.

Sansa smiles kindly to him. It's a shame he does not see it, since he's still looking down. "You know what I'm talking about. I thought you men liked to feel like hunters?"

"Lions don't hunt if the lioness is around," he states, and Sansa thinks that explains a great deal about his family, in general. But it is not about them she cares about; not now, anyway.

"Well, that's a shame," Sansa rebukes, but her voice is sweet, and her thumb soothingly caresses the back of his hand underneath it. "I'm no lioness. I'm a wolf."

At that, her husband just laughs, the inevitable sound breaking the tension in his shoulders. "Of course you are a wolf," he murmurs, primarily to himself. "I'm sure you won't break," he says, and when he raises his head Sansa sees something there in his face that is, at the same time, brave and vulnerable and _hungry_ , among the fear and the shame. It sends a shiver down her spine, cold and white. "But what about me?"

And she remembers, _every man has a breaking point_ and— oh.

"You are stronger than that," she says, confidant and sure, and glides his hand higher until it reaches the lower limit of her rib-cage, and carefully higher, until he is cupping one of her breasts in the palm of his hand, and- _please_ , she thinks; does not ask, she can't, one of them has to be the strong one, so she holds it back, the _begging_ that threatens to raise up to her mouth: _come on, please, I need to feel something, I'm so cold, my skin is so thick now_.

She lets go of his hand, then, praying he will understand how much it means.

"You don't know what you're saying, my lady," he says, every word hoarse; the other hand is crawling up to her waist and bringing her whole body closer, very carefully, but not quite gentle. She feels the back of his fingers stroking the side of her breast; too soft, as if to torture, while he studies her face, her response. For the first time, it occurs to Sansa that he may be afraid, but he knows what he is doing; he must know. She seeks for his eyes to anchor her here, in the moment, so her mind won't flee or try to hide, so her body won't grow paralysed with fear; and there, amidst black and green irises, she sees awe, and a fierce _lust_ , that Sansa forgets to dread for the first time in years. "I'm not strong at all. And we've established I'm also not honourable?" he says; it sounds like a question, somehow, an irony and yet a truth. _I'm no good man_.

But Sansa grins. This is a beast she knows she can tame, and it is absurd how much she wants him to just touch her already. She doesn't even know why. "You may not be strong nor honourable but we _have_ established you can be very kind when you want to," she says, lightly, her voice something between a jape and a vow of trust.

"And that you're inspiring," he completes; it makes her laugh a little, and it is impossible to believe his flattery is cheap, because he can't look away from her face, he can't help but smile intimately to himself as he hears her short giggle.

"And that I am inspiring." She lets her nails run lightly over the exposed skin of his neck; he licks his lower lip, grasps it under his teeth. Sansa, for a moment, considers doing it herself. She never bit anyone's lip before, and it had never occurred to her to do so until this very moment. Maybe is just the wolf speaking. "That must be enough, for now."

He considers her words, the beginning of a smirk ghosting his mouth but never settling there, his fingers still brushing the sides of her breasts in the lightest of the caresses. "Hm. Kindly, then? I've always assumed this is how you'd like it."

And she hears her own breathing, shallower, only at the _idea_ that all this time, he has _imagined_ this, her, and the things she may or may not like. "Slow, I'd say," she explains. "And kind, yes, but not exactly soft."

"Slow but not soft," he smirks, and looks at her, scrutinizing, but not cold; rather the contrary, sending a jet of blood to her cheeks. "That's interesting. I like it." 

Sansa signals to him, just once. His thumb, then, runs around the lower curve of the mound inside his hand, and then covers a nipple, _slowly_ but not _softly_ , circling it until it grows hard and sensitive and perfectly distinguishable against the fabric of her gown. She closes her eyes, exhales a long breathe of _relief_ , and feels something... Pulsing. Like a beat, a heartbeat, but not in her chest. "All right?" he asks, voice tight.

"Yes," she murmurs, her head lolling forward and downward, until her brow meets his. _You don't need to ask_ , she thinks about saying, but changes her mind. The world will always doubt her word, but not here. Here, she is as a Queen. He won't touch her without her consent, won't move until she moves too. She can feel something very hard against the inner face of her thigh but there are no threats here, nothing to be afraid of, she tells herself, nothing to be afraid of. "Yes, this is all right." His fingers never stop the slow, careful massage of her flesh, exploring and _knowing_ her, while his other hand leaves her waist and wander around: down to her hip, her leg around him, still safe and yet braver than before. He doesn't lift the hem of her gown, but he slides his hand underneath it and asks, so quietly, "and this?" his lips brushing on her neck, where he is hiding his face. Sansa discovers it is hard to speak.

"This too, yes," she hurries to say, afraid he will stop, but it sounds fainted, breathless. He doesn't stop, then, all the while leaving unhurried kisses on her cheek, her throat, some very specific point between her neck and her shoulder that sends goosebumps all over her arms. He takes in a deep breath, bows down to kiss the visible, exposed part of her other breast above the neckline of her gown, and it takes all the strength that she has to keep herself from moaning at the contact, even more so when he whispers, still so close to her that she can feel his stubble against her chest, "gods, you are so beautiful, Sansa."

"Am I?" she asks, not because she doubts him, but just because she wants to hear him saying it again.

"You are," he murmurs, nodding slightly. "And brave, too. For us both." She laughs, the sound muffled in his hair. She can be brave for them both, if she has to. 

"You seem rather bold today as well, husband," she whispers, hoping it will work as encouragement.

He laughs. "I'm not doing even half of the things I want to, so I wouldn't say that."

Oh. His voice. His _voice_.

She is not sure if she should, really. It seems cruel, to ask for him to say things she won't allow him to do right now. 

But Sansa is afraid of things she can't control, afraid of unknowns, of ungovernable desires. She guards her own urges; they're tucked in and suffocated inside the closed walls of her plans for the future: safe and dead, cold as the North, disposable and only useful in restrict circumstances.

But if she knew what to _expect_ , maybe it wouldn't be so scary, maybe--

"What would you do, if you could?" she asks, and her own voice is a trembling thing, clearly insecure.

He holds his silence for a moment, his hands stopping where they are, and Sansa is afraid she broke the spell of the moment. "Maybe we shouldn't," and before she can feel the pain of rejection, he explains, "I think I would scare you."

"Try me," Sansa pleads. He kisses the side of his neck, the most available part of her skin to his lips in the position he is in; it doesn't go unnoticed, for her, these little demonstrations of bravery, of want, when he is hidden from her sight: night time, or candles out, or his face against her neck or her back or, like now, his cheek against her cheek. "I want to listen to you."

"So brave," he praises, almost hurtful; if seems painful to want her, now, unsheltered like this. But Tyrion lifts his head so his mouth is brushing on her ear and Sansa is already holding her breath. "Well, first of all, I want to tear apart this pretty gown of yours since I put my eyes on you tonight," he says, barely above a whisper. They are not looking at each other; she doesn't think neither of them could do it, if they were. He keeps his arms around her, and his chin against her shoulder as she listens to his whistling breath in her ear, checking himself from looking into her eyes. Sansa can't tell if it is fear that leads him to do so or the absolute contrary, the hope it will work. And her whole body stiffens in shock, her eyes widening as plates. She didn't know what to expect, but certainly not this. Not the casualness of his words; not the boldness of them; definitely, not the way her heart races inside her chest, her stomach dropping in anticipation. He feels her members rigid inside his embrace; asks, as if to make sure, "Sansa?"

"Don't stop," she whispers. His mouth is so close to her ear; she does not miss it when he smiles audibly.

"You seem to like it so much, though," he says, and starts to fondle the dress covering her legs, grabbing it between his fingers to feel the texture of it, "and it is really pretty, so maybe not. Maybe I should take my time undressing you, and we do no damage to your clothes. Would you prefer it like that?"

A picture of scraps of her dress on the floor appears in her head, and then another one, of his fingers removing the straps of her gown, sliding them down her shoulders, and she swallows dry, her skin humming at his words, at his voice, so grave and deep. "I- yes, I guess," she agrees feebly, closes her eyes.

"And since you said _slowly_ ," he proceeds, and she can feel and listen the warmth of his breath in her neck, his hands aiming to touch again her hips, deft and incredibly warm. She feels the heat of him even with clothes on her way. "I would like to taste you. Everywhere. Because you taste so sweet when you kiss me, darling, so, so good, and I keep wondering," he murmurs, and Sansa does not understand _how_ he can sound so frustratingly calm while his hands travel to cup her breasts, both, kneading them carefully, "how would other parts of you feel in my mouth?"

"Other parts of me," Sansa repeats, feeling completely dizzy and stupid. She is not even sure she knows what he is talking about. She just want him to do it, whatever it is.

"Yes," he confirms, a thumb brushing against her nipple and she bites her lip so she won't make any sound. "And I know you don't like my beard, you say it burns you, but if I kissed you here," he says, and one hand skims, with no haste, all the way from her chest, across her belly, until her hip again and slips under her gown, so _close_ to her core but not there, settling his palm against her inner thigh instead, stroking it gently, "and if I were gentle, would you mind that much?"

"Not- not really," she murmurs, completely aware that she sounds breathless. Suddenly, she adores his beard.

"Maybe it would leave a mark," he points out, clinically. "Your skin is so perfect, darling. It would be a shame if I marked you this way, don't you think?"

"I wouldn't care," she soughs, half-mad, skin burning. She wraps one arm around his shoulders, looking for support of some sort, even if she is sitting and there's no way she could fall. 

But it feels like it, like falling, like loosing her stance, her balance.

"I see. Maybe you are right," he says, and he sounds so careless, still caressing her thigh under her gown, "it would be hidden from view, after all. No one would know, it would be our secret," he suggests. Sansa loses it. Secrets are her weakness. "If you could keep quiet."

"Fuck," she mutters, and bites her lip, feels the walls of her womanhood _clenching_. This is absolutely ridiculous, he just talking, but gods, his voice.

He chuckles. "What is it, darling?"

" _You_ ," she says, sounding so hoarse, her throat dry. "I can't guarantee I would keep myself quiet," she manages to pull out with the last drop of her lucidity, wondering if she should speak at all, interrupt the thread of his ideas, "in this hypothetical scenario."

He doesn't seem to mind; if anything, he is pleased, for he is still smiling (she is sure he is) when he speaks again. "We must find a way to keep your mouth shut, then," he says, low and wicked, in the exact same voice he uses to deal with problems at work during the day, except not even nearly as bored as that. "You could always bite a pillow."

"You could kiss me," she suggests.

He bites the lobe of her ear before he speaks again, making Sansa gasp, her nails biting his shoulders and sliding to his back until she checks herself. He has scars, she remembers, she can't claw his back open- "I had other plans to my mouth. Speculatively speaking, of course," he says. The hand on her thigh finally moves up, and Sansa lets her head loll back when she feels it between her open legs, stroking so lightly over the fabric of her small-clothes, his touch too soft to bring anything but more agony, a summer breeze against the storm she is feeling. It aches, she can't help but notice, because she has never felt anything of the sorts before. She is _aching_. His mouth brushes on the base of her throat when he continues, "I'm curious. Has anyone ever kissed you here, Sansa?"

She needs to answer. She needs to find her voice.

"No," she says, finally, among her faltering breath, straightening her head, and realises that the fingers of her feet are curling, "I've always assumed there is nothing there for anyone to put their mouths on."

She knows men like it; she could never quite imagine how it could be done in a woman. Isn't that, after all, the main difference between them? A woman is made of a _hole_ ; a woman is defined by her absences, by what is in fault in her.

But his thumb starts to massage her, and Sansa starts to question if there is anything really lacking in her, because in this very moment, her body feels perfect.

"There is quite a lot for me to put my mouth on," he says, and then his thumb finds the little nub at the top of her mound, the origin of all the pulsing and all the heat and the aching, and Sansa moans for the first time, her hips bucking against his hand, seeking for any kind of friction, desperate. Finally, his voice seems to break, and the fracture of his restraint sounds rough and delicious, " _gods_ , Sansa."

"Tyrion," she whispers, completely hopeless, "come on."

"What do you want?" he asks, and his voice is a liquid thing, like oil, murky and deep, like he is clawing her skin out, exposing her nerves all at once, and gods above, his thumb is moving so tortuously slow that Sansa almost finds him cruel for it.

She does not know how to name it out loud, not for anyone else but herself. "I don't know," she protests, tries not to writhe.

"You can ask," he says, kisses her shoulder so tenderly that Sansa would be emotional, if her mind weren't currently occupied with pursuing the embers that are burning bright and consuming in her insides. "Don't be ashamed. Whatever you want."

"I need you to touch me," she says, and even though he was the one who brought her almost to the edge only with his words, her own voice sounds like a command, something he cannot choose to deny, disobey, barely recognizable to her own ears. "Really touch me, not only-"

And he does not wait for her to finish, his fingers sliding inside of her small-clothes, experimentally exploring her folds, the bush of coarse hair covering it, and Sansa no longer cares if he wants to be kept away from her view; she withdraws just enough to face him, to crush her mouth against his. He drinks her sounds, the half-moans, half-whimpers she offers. She kisses him with her eyes half-open only to see he is looking back at her, and she knows- like the fire of the desire he lit in her is illuminating truths that stay hidden, in the darkness of their routine - he is not in his mind, lost in his fantasies, and neither is she. They are here, with each other, present, alive, breathing the moment, and- 

"So wet," he coos on the edge of her mouth, his voice, too, breathless and strained. She knows she is, but she no longer has the presence of mind to be embarrassed about it; for two of his fingers are circling her entrance, very carefully, and she is almost thanking the gods out loud now. "May I?" he asks.

Oh, how Sansa loves the fact that he asks, even at this point. She gives him a feverish nod, unable to deny him anything, unsure herself about what should come next and yet unafraid. He lets one finger slide inside her; it is such a different sensation, but not unwelcome and neither unfamiliar, and at first he just keeps it there, still, as if waiting for the next command, her next move. It brings some sort of relief to the pressure, but not enough. "More," she says, finding this braveness he keeps praising her about somewhere deep in her own need; this is unknown territory, but she keeps listening to him say _whatever you want_ , and her body keeps asking for more, more.

He slides another finger and her lids fall heavy, she fights to keep them open, to stare at him, to see his face when he mouths a soundless _fuck_. He feels so thick inside her, thicker than she imagined for fingers, anyway. Both of her arms wrap around his neck again as he starts to slide his fingers out and then in again, very slowly at first. She enjoys the feeling of breathing in synchrony with him, of being filled, the hot, visceral intimacy of the moment. She feels vulnerable, exposed, open, and yet the most powerful, beautiful woman in the whole realm, if she could tell only from his eyes. Maybe what arouses her the most is the fact that _he_ seems to be enjoying it, observing her face as if he is drunk in her, keeping his eyes fixed on her, and as much as she tries to keep quiet, her throat works involuntary mewls of pleasure, wordless and distorted and utterly unladylike. He keeps his rhythm constant, steady, firm, and Sansa abandons herself to his care. Never before it felt so wonderful to lose her control.

And when she thinks it couldn't be better, he curls his fingers inside her, strokes _somewhere_ inside her she is sure no one has ever touched before, and presses the arch of his hand against the top of her sex at the same time, and it feels like the air is being completely knocked out of her lungs. She jolts in his lap and closes her arms tighter around his neck, pleasure hitting her like a lightening, igniting her nerves, heavenly. "Oh _gods_ ," she soughs, her whole body squirming above him, her head dropping again, but he uses the hand not working on her to lift her chin, himself looking up so their eyes can lock.

"I found you," he says, a smile in there, somewhere, but Sansa is too overwhelmed to smile back. He gives her no time to recover and repeats the gesture, once, twice, thrice and more, and she moans in both surprise and bliss. Loud. Her hips rock against his hand mindlessly and erratic. "With me, darling, not against me," he says, so, so gentle, and Sansa is incommensurably grateful that at least one of them still can think and speak.

"More," she says, she _orders_ , and he raises one eyebrow to her.

"More?"

" _Tyrion_ ," Sansa says, almost begging, and he looks her in the eye while she lets a third finger slip inside her and curls them just so, just there, and her hips sway towards him, as if he is casting a spell on them, "yes, like that, this-"

"With me," he says, his other arm pulling her closer again, and from that moment on, Sansa lets go. There is nothing but this: he whispers once in a while, but she can't identify the words completely. All she listens to is the depth of his voice; they breathe hard, and he feels so, so right inside her like this, his fingers moving in and out like they are following the rhythm her body is singing; they move together, like a dance, his thumb firmly pressing circles against her pulsing, throbbing nub, and wherever is that other spot inside her that makes her moan his name, each time more high-pitched, more like a whine, a pleading thing. She says it to him, that he is doing it so right and he feels so good, and he shuts her up with a kiss, his tongue lavishing her mouth wet and sloppy and perfect. Her hips move so easily, fucking his fingers out of instinct, swaying in movements that are both graceful and unapologetically obscene, and Sansa _laughs_ , astonished, against his lips among her moans, proud of herself, free, wild, completely oblivious until the moment that such thing as laugh out of pleasure was possible, and Tyrion smiles amazed to her at the sound, says _yes_ , but at some point, as the pressure and the pulse of life grows in her core and becomes too much for her to bear, to breathe, even her laughter dies: before she can think about it, she is asking _harder_ and he makes it harder and faster and she moves harder and faster with him and when it comes to her Sansa is not _ready_ for it. It hits her out of nowhere, wave after wave after wave of pleasure that drowns her, she can't find the surface to _breathe_ and her whole body shudders and shudders as she rides it out, throwing her head back and moaning hoarsely, howling, almost.

She does not descend from it immediately, her body trembling with smaller waves in the afterglow as he keeps caressing her until it starts to hurt. She winces, touches his wrist. Her legs are weak as jelly, but she finds some strength to support her weight on her knees, resting at each side of his legs on the couch, only enough to make it easier for him to remove his hand; but she falls on his lap again as soon as he is out. Her eyes are still foggy with the aftermath of it all, but she sees when he puts his fingers inside his mouth and sucks them clean. Her mouth falls open, agape, and it dawns on her the realization that she wants him. She _wants_ the things he spoke about, she wants to hear the end of it.

Tyrion licks his lips and smirks to her. "I'm sorry. Did you want it?"

Her breathing is slowly coming back to bottom, but at least now she can speak. "Yes," she says, hazily.

He holds her chin to bring her mouth closer, to kiss her, open-mouthed, like a sacrifice, an offer. She licks her own wetness from his tongue and, _at last_ , he moans too, a low sound that reverberates all the way to her own throat. When she parts from him, he still has that half-smirking look, eyes shining and dark, "so?"

"Salty," Sansa says, and his smirk turns into a smile.

"You are wonderful," he murmurs, simply.

And Sansa feels so deliciously exhausted, so sated and so grateful; she lets her body fall, tired and heavy in his arms, stifling a quiet chuckle against his hair. She feels a completely dumb, slow-witted, dense sort of happiness. He is smiling audibly, too, giggling, she could name it; not amused but _happy_ as he holds her, tenderly stroking her arms, waiting until she is strong enough to leave his lap and sits by his side on the couch; and even then, her head rests on his shoulder, and she reaches for his hand, intertwining their fingers together. He kisses her brow and says nothing.

"I feel very sleepy," she says, looking at their joined hands, after a very long, comfortable silence, when her mind starts to wake up at the edges. 

Tyrion laughs quietly. "Some say it is the best treatment for insomnia."

"I would never bother you like this every time I can't sleep."

"I wouldn't mind, really. But you wouldn't need _me_ every time."

"Tyrion," she chides. It is not like she had never tried to touch herself before, although she always stopped before her body could find its release, afraid of being found or listened, ashamed of herself. He chuckles again, brings the hand linked in his to his mouth and kisses it. It looks so chaste for someone who had that same hand buried in her cunt to the knuckles, five minutes ago. "That was... very kind of you," she says, then, wondering if a _thank you_ would be more appropriated. But if property is the issue, she is doomed; for some reason, it is hard to look at his face, now. She keeps her eyes down.

"Oh, kind," he repeats, slyly, the smile lingering in his voice. "Is this how we are calling it, now? A kindness?"

Sansa laughs, licking her own lips. She struggle with words, with explanations. This is not what he expects of her. He knew her as a lady, courteous and composed; she cannot begin to fathom what he must be thinking about her, now. But when she finds her courage to turn her head to the side and up, their gazes meet for a second before he looks away, and for Sansa's surprise, she sees her shyness reflected in his beautiful mismatched eyes, the same wariness, as if he is, too, embarrassed and waiting for her judgment.

"I'm sorry if I pushed too far," he says, finally.

(Never before Sansa had found him so beautiful.)

"I wanted it," she frowns her eyebrows, cups his cheek. "Maybe it is not that bad to lose control once in a while."

"Who are you and what did you do to my wife?" he japes, and Sansa laughs more, her self-consciousness forgotten for a second. "You looked so lovely when you came," he murmurs, somewhat darkly. "And when you cursed."

Sansa feels the heat of blood radiating to her cheeks instantaneously. "I didn't curse."

He smirks. "Sweetheart: you did," he declares in a haughty tone. "But who am I to judge? I actually felt very proud of you."

"You are a naughty man," she mutters, mortified, and covers her face with both of her hands, only to hear him _laughing_. Her hands fall on her lap, revealing her incredulous expression when she questions, indignant and proud, "are you- laughing at me?"

"I'm not laughing _at you_ ," he explains, and takes her hand in his again. "But you wore your smallest gown," he starts, so fondly that her anger stops boiling, "you straddled me, you kissed me, you asked me to touch you. You just came on my lap, and yet you are reddening because of a swear word or two?" he laughs it off again, shakes his head, unbelieving. "I don't think I will ever grow tired of you, my lady."

She looks up at his face, then, and he is looking at her, as if- as if-

( _as if he loved you?_ , a voice in her head offers. She ignores it.) "Only one swear word," Sansa corrects, and can't help but smile. Small and tiny but a smile, undoubtedly.

He winks at her as he would to a child. "Of course. I apologize. Only one."

(Sansa tries to remember the last time she felt so cared for, so important in a human way, not in some historical sense of inheritances and Houses and games being played; the last time she allowed herself to be happy in some unprofitable, vain way. Something for her alone.) 

"Did you feel it?" she asks, suddenly. "When it... Happened?"

He inspects her eyes; Sansa is relieved that he understands her question. "You mean besides the fact you were screaming and trembling?" he says, and she reddens again. "Yes."

"Really?" It is surprising, intriguing, actually, for her. Men were so different, with their seed spilling all over, everything so evident and visible. Sansa finds it easier to understand how men's bodies worked; her own is so much complex, it seems, with all these processes happening in the insides. ( _That must mean something about women_ , Sansa ponders.) 

Tyrion smiles to her, comes closer to steal a quick kiss, taking her aback. "You are adorable like that, you know," he says. "All curious about how things work."

"Tell me," she demands.

He takes her hand, closes his fingers around three of hers, squeezes and loosens his grip several times. "Like this. But wetter." And then he frowns. "Also tighter, and warmer, and smoother." He lets go of her hand, head shaking in frustration. "Just _better._ I'm not doing it justice. It is the most amazing thing my fingers have ever experienced," he finally declares. "Thank you."

Sansa chortles shortly at his exaggerated adulation, her fingers insisting on toying with his, her eyes cast down, "why are you thanking me? I should be the one doing the thanking," she murmurs, a little shy. He is still hard in his trousers, after all, although he does not seem to give much thought about it.

" _Why_ am I thanking you?" he repeats, as if he couldn't believe her. Something in his tone urges her to lift her head and she finds him looking at her in awe, not smiling, but warm like summer. (And it is like, in a second, she understands why she asked him to stay. This is why. It is this look in his eyes). He reaches out the hand she is not grasping and touches her cheek with the gentleness of a feather. "When will you learn, Sansa Stark?"

Sansa looks at him for a very long moment, feels a stubborn lump tightening her throat, tears threatening to water her eyes. And then leans over and kisses him, hoping he will understand what she can't bring herself to say out loud, _thank you, thank you, thank you_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- maybe too soon. (or maybe not)
> 
> \- oh, the Consent Is Sexy trope
> 
> \- I have so many headcanons for Sansa kinks!!! somebody help me. also, tyrion's voice is, canonically, Something.
> 
> \- i do hate writing smut, though, so be kind to this author please
> 
> \- my computer is broken and gone with all my notes and that is why it took me so long to write this 
> 
> \- from now on I guess we are going to have chapters like this, longer, covering great periods of time, because why time lines? screw time lines, said D&D once
> 
> \- also, don't you all love edna st. vincent millay? i literally named a plant after her. she is so awesome.


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